Thread: Early razor scales?

Your razor was made between 1790 or so and maybe 1810. By 1814, that style blade was most of the way out.

The original scales could have been born, bone, ivory, or tortoise shell (which wasn't made from tortoises -- instead it came from hawksbill sea turtles which are surprisingly different from tortoises).

Horn, obviously, is your best bet. It's a pretty easy material to work with, but make sure you've got good ventilation. It smells exactly like burning hair because it's the same stuff.

I'm out at dinner right now, but I can get some pictures of the details of how the edges were done when I get home.

In the interim, ScienceGuy has a super handy batch of scale tracings which are organized by era and razor type. I believe you can print these pictures on a sheet of 8.5x11 paper and they are 1:1 size.