Thread: Wooden Scale Advice

Regarding restoration, well this is my take on it, as far as celluloid and plastic scales from original vintage razors are concerned, these were very easy for the manufacturers of the day to make and quality control was easily met because they were all cast in the same mould, to make scales from very expensive hardwoods needs far more high level of skill and without doubt would certainly bump the cost of those razors back then, and regarding keeping the razors original i'm not sure that as any real relevance, because i'm 100 per cent sure if the very best razor manufacturers back then would have had Micarta Carbon fibre and the vast array of plastics and materials available back then I have absolutely no doubt they would have used them, so when i hear people say you shouldn't use this or that material because it's not right, well i'm thinking there really is no such thing as right or wrong, i will give you a prime example regarding vintage razors, Filarmonica's great blades most of the scales are without doubt the worst i've ever seen and always made me wonder why no one ever pointed this out to the company while they were producing the razors, imo the scales where sometimes an after thought in a lot of vintage razors.

Jamie.

Originally Posted by celticcrusader

Regarding restoration, well this is my take on it, as far as celluloid and plastic scales from original vintage razors are concerned, these were very easy for the manufacturers of the day to make and quality control was easily met because they were all cast in the same mould, to make scales from very expensive hardwoods needs far more high level of skill and without doubt would certainly bump the cost of those razors back then, and regarding keeping the razors original i'm not sure that as any real relevance, because i'm 100 per cent sure if the very best razor manufacturers back then would have had Micarta Carbon fibre and the vast array of plastics and materials available back then I have absolutely no doubt they would have used them, so when i hear people say you shouldn't use this or that material because it's not right, well i'm thinking there really is no such thing as right or wrong, i will give you a prime example regarding vintage razors, Filarmonica's great blades most of the scales are without doubt the worst i've ever seen and always made me wonder why no one ever pointed this out to the company while they were producing the razors, imo the scales where sometimes an after thought in a lot of vintage razors.

Jamie.

+1 to Jamie's opinion. Manufacturers are always motivated by the bottom line: profit. Make it as inexpensively as possible and sell it for as much as possible.
As far as restoration goes, my $0.02 = "You own it. Now make it yours."

Originally Posted by celticcrusader

and regarding keeping the razors original i'm not sure that as any real relevance, because i'm 100 per cent sure if the very best razor manufacturers back then would have had Micarta Carbon fibre and the vast array of plastics and materials available back then I have absolutely no doubt they would have used them, .

I agree Jamie, one only has to look at Dovo and TI today and see that some of their new scale designs came directly from SRP and the Restorers designs from here... Doubt me ???

Start at 2006 and move froward in the archives and look for yourself...

My opinion on the matter relates to cars. There are plenty of vintage restores out there. There are also plenty of hotrods. I have a nice old extra hollow Clarke in three-pin horn scales that I would consider a classic. I just chose a (conservative) hotrod route for my W&B restore. There's room for both, even in the same collection.