Thread: Most common reason blade isn't centered?

Sometimes the blade is ground slightly off center, this happened often in older vintage “near wedge” razors. Back then they used a single wheel to grind the hollows, one side at a time.
Also older blades, sometimes the taper of the tang is not ground even with the axis of the blade and that will throw the blade to one side or the other.
I suppose they weren’t too concerned about the “precision” of the grinding because it would shave as well as one that was ground evenly, and the finisher could “adjust” the new scales to fit… easily done with horn.

Sometimes the one scale would shrink more that the other and that would cause the pivot holes to go out of alignment… but more often celluloid scales with inserts, both scales may scale shrink at the same rate, however the metal insert on the front scale will not, so the front scale will warp throwing the butt end out of center.

I have stopped worrying about a blade's pivot hole drilled off centre, the pivot pin will always be a “loose fit” in the hole, so if the holes in the scales are centered and all other things being OK, then the blade will center.

And of course, a badly warped blade would do the same… I guess nothing is perfect but this makes for interesting variety.