Thread: Early razor scales?

Ok. I have a razor from around 1790 and the scales are probably mid 1800.
I am trying to see if there is anyone or place that sells scales from then that they have collected from old broken razors. Either that or reproductions of that style. I maybe willing to send it to someone to do it.

Voidmonster, Science Guy, Sharptonn, Tarkus are all guys that are into the old stuff like that. Maybe one of them could help out.

Pics of the razor could be helpful.

Any good restore guy can make new scales out of the material you think is best for your blade or should I say period correct. Shape is no problem. Pics will be necessary and/or a sketch would help. The blade will have to go to the restore guy for fitting to the blade. I wouldn't trust going by your measurements if you sent it to me. Just saying, not looking for work. In fact now that I have said that I would refuse to do it. But the wedge ( if a new 1 is necessary ) will have to be made to fit the blade width so that it sits right in the scales. As far as prying an old pair out of a guys collection....good luck on that and I mean finding a pair that fit right.

so how hard is it to make horn scales? What would be needed? I have ideas, but may be more trouble than I think.

I just restored a razor with the exact same scales as yours which are about 100 years to late for your razor, I took a good look through many photo's of stub tail razors from your period then I made a set using some Horn blanks and domed washers.

Here is a stub with original scales ( I believe ) As I recall the older they are the straighter and more simple the scale design. My buddy Zak would be the vat of knowledge I turned to for info. Not to take anything away from the others mentioned at all.

Probably close to these.

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.

Here's 7 different styles of scales + ornaments from around the right time period.



You've got a lot of leeway! Obviously some of them are more difficult to do than others. Probably the most straight forward would be the flat slab with rounded edges. I've had good luck making those sort of edges with a router bit with my Dremel held in a vise and just gently work the edge until it looks right.

It's about 50/50 whether or not razors from this time period had pewter wedges or not. If they didn't, the wedge was cut into the scales. I wouldn't recommend trying that unless you've got experience with it.

I know folks regularly talk about the lead wedges in old razors but most -- if not all -- were made from pewter. There's a lot of folks selling reasonably priced pewter ingots on eBay.

What I've done to make wedges is use an old teflon-coated baking pan with squared edges. I tilt it at a slight angle, hold the metal with some pliers and then just melt it with a blowtorch into the pan. From there it's easy to cut it down and shape it with a belt sander.

Strangely, many of the razors from that period have wedges with a characteristic pattern of holes. There's the central hole which the pin goes through but it's surrounded by three others in a pattern like the Clubs mark. It's only really noticeable if you use translucent horn.