Quote Originally Posted by holli4pirating View Post
That looks way better than I thought it would come out. Nice work!
Thank you for the compliment. It was rude of me not to respond right away.

I have to admit to being intimidated by the possibility of celluloid rot. The staining on the scales and the black on the blade certainly pointed to that.

Given a fairly small investment in the both the razor and the coffin box, I decided to try to clean it up and see what time will do. I didn’t have much to lose by being patient. It’s a good thing I had a vacation planned so that I could go away and think about alternatives before tearing the old scales off. When I got back, nothing new or bad had happened, so the decision to work with the existing scales was a pretty easy one to make.

I did learn a couple of really important things. I learned a lot more than I ever wanted to know about celluloid rot (I knew NOTHING at all about it before this) and I learned to be patient when working on a restoration/clean up.

I also confirmed that there are a lot of good people on these forums who will advise and guide with great generosity. Thanks to all.