Thread: Possible to use as scales...

Personally I enjoy the sharp curve outside. I think you have some mighty fine scales in your future

Good luck and let me know how it goes

I'd say the same...picture #1.

Nice looking horn!

As far as the water is concerned, if you trat them with oil, and just be careful (don't let the scales sit in pools of water, or submerged) they should be fine.

Keep a small towel to wipe the scales down after you shave, and run it in between the scales as well. Blow forcefully around the pivot, and hang it up to dry.

Here's a Wiki entry on straightening horn scales in which the author says he soaks them in sweet almond oil for 24 hrs after straightening them. Good luck, and can't wait to see your new completed razor

Fixing warped horn scales - Straight Razor Place Wiki

If you were worried about warping you could always epoxy them to a liner but if you sealed them you wouldn't have to worry about water exposure. Max's expertise is top-notch though so I would do what he says.

Originally Posted by claytor

If you were worried about warping you could always epoxy them to a liner but if you sealed them you wouldn't have to worry about water exposure. Max's expertise is top-notch though so I would do what he says.

+1 on that, Max really knows his stuff here.

When the horn is flattened into plates it is boiled in water, sometimes for longer than an hour. Varying the heat can change the colour - a higher heat usually lightens the colour, sometimes turning it "blond" or translucent (it used to be used for lanterns = "lant-horn") - but the heat must be somewhat below 325 degrees or the horn becomes damaged and unusable. Boil it for long enough to get the plasticity you need - too long and it could turn into jelly! Gelatine can be produced in this way. It can always be returned to the heat. At this sort of heat it becomes a mouldable thermoplastic material, easily formed into shapes by hand or tools and can be pressed into carved moulds to give it a pattern, just like plastic. To produce the flat plate it is put into a press consisting of heated metal plates, and pressure is applied.

Wet heat isn't needed - it is time consuming, too. Dry heat produces much quicker results. A propane torch or similar can be used, or even the gas ring on the oven. A softly burning flame is necessary, so if you use propane you need one of the wide-mouthed solid ends that give an oxygen-starved, bushy flame - the small 'jet' pieces produce an intense flame that will burn or scorch the horn. For quite thin sections a hot-air blower or even a hairdryer will do.

If you inspect the plates you will see a tendency for them to curve in certain ways - work with the natural curve of the material, for instance for scales you could cut two pieces that bow away from each other. It is easily worked when dry and cold - a sanding block or rasp is all you need (you can see the coarse patterns left by the rasp on the insides sometimes, especially at the wedge end). Wear a mask while you sand it. The surface will go a bit "woolly" - don't worry about that. When you progress to higher grits, the smoothness begins to come back. Leaving off sanding at around 400 - 600 grit and going to a buffer with a tripoli mop brings up a glass-like shine. If you don't have a buffer just keep going higher up the grit scale until the finish is satisfactory. In days before buffers they used fine ashes, dampened, on a leather pad for the final shine.

When the pieces are thinner they can easily be bent by putting them in a pyrex jug filled with boiling water and leaving them for a few minutes. I do this to straighten old horn scales: into the pyrex, pour on boiling water and keep testing them find the point at which they turn plastic. Then place them on a flat bit of board, cover with another flat bit of board and use c-clamps round the edges. Leave until cool. They come out nice and flat. If you want to enhance the flatness, they could be put between two steel plates heated with the blowlamp. The longer period spent hot and the slow cooling down reduce the risk of warping.

I shouldn't worry too much about water exposure - you don't shave in boiling water do you?! If you try not to get the scales wet and don't keep them in a humid location, they should be OK - there are plenty of examples a 100 years old and more that survive and are still OK, after all. Soaking in tallow (use neatsfoot oil) was once used, but it only serves for waterproofing and possibly for stopping delamination from drying out too much, but it will darken the colour a little. And it smells like something cooking.

Regards,
Neil.

Hey Neil,
Really great post. Lots of knowledge crammed in there. I had guests tonight, and I am supposed to be taking a conference call later, but I really want to start sanding the scales right now. What grit is safe to start with? Can I go with an aggressive 80 grit wet/dry?

Also so some posts by others that said they ruined the scales by putting into boiling water. Where do you think they went wrong? Probably directly on stove as opposed to getting water to boiling point and removing from heat (I assume this how you do it)? Or do you keep the scales in the pyrex while on the stove?

I have an industrial hair dryer for my Newfoundlands. I was thinking of trying this first as I can always go higher.

As always, thanks for the help guys. You're a good bunch on here.

Hi Shangers!

The safest way is to just pour boiling water into the pyrex - that will take it below boiling point, then dip the scales in for a few secs then withdraw and see if they have become plastic enough to reshape - that's what I do. If the water needs to be hotter, boil the kettle again and replace the water - the now heated pyrex will keep the heat up.

You could place the pyrex on the hob like you suggest, but as the sclaes are quite small now you have cut them to size and - presumably - sanded out to remove hollows and the like, you probably won't have to do that. Depending on the scales thickness it only takes up to 5 mins max - trial and error!

If you are a bit leery of using water then by all means try the hot air blower. The only downside is that you will probably burn your fingers and the heat doesn't pentrate very far unless you really play it on the scales, so they cool down a lot quicker.

I usually sand starting at 150 - 180, but why not start with what you have on the inside surface of the scales, to see how it goes? It's easy stuff to sand, much easier than wood, so take it easy. Remember that you want to get all the scratch marks out eventually, and at lower grits that equates to taking quite a bit of depth off too.

If you have a spare piece of horn why dont you cut it to approx. scale dims and experiment with that first - sort of a trial run til you get comfortable with things.

Good luck!
Neil

Hey Guys,
Worked a bit on the scales this weekend. I got them to the correct thickness. However, I noticed as I was sanding that where the dark color striations are in the horn, it had the tendency to separate similar to a knot in wood. As such, I tried to sand from both sides, but because the scales were so thin, I got to a place where the striations were reaching the surface on both sides. I still need to take another mm off, and as such, I got into that pitting, knot-in-the-wood effect (sorry if I am not using the correct terms, feel free to correct me).

Anyway, now I have certain areas where the dark striations are, and pits around them. Also, thin film of horn near the striations which looks whitish like peeling skin. Is there anyway to fill in the pits? Should I soak with neatsfoot oil first, and then use some kind of epoxy to fill the pits, or is there nothing that can be done at this point?

I am thinking none of you pros ever got to this point, but if someone has an idea, I am open to suggestions.

The peeling part is a symptom of delamination - the layers are coming apart. I couldn't see any sign of it in the pics you posted, or I would have mentioned it. Sometimes - if the material is thick enough - you can sand through it, sometimes not. You mostly see it in old, dried horn. Soaking in neatsfoot oil doesn't cure it, it just makes it look less obvious - the refractive index of the oil must be somewhere near that of horn, so oil fills the gaps between layers rather than air. If the oil dries out/evaporates, the delamination will still be there.

Not sure about the knot and pitmarks - never seen that before. Perhaps a finer grade paper would help - try it on a scrap piece.

Seeing as the horn has several issues already I'm not too keen on the boiling water bending process - it might make things worse!

Regards,
Neil.

The nature of horn is that it is a gamble. It may warp, it may not- regardless of water exposure. That's just the risk you take. It could happen in a year, it could happen in ten, etc. Using a liner won't stop warping because the liner material is usually thin and flexible. Stabilizing it (I mean professionally, not DIY types) would be the closest you can come to stopping warping, but with horn I'm not sure if there's a guarantee there.