Thread: Scales with handtools only. What material?

I found some 6 inch long horn blanks which should be long enough according to my drawings. I'll double check when I get home.

From those of you that have worked with horn, is $14 shipped a decent price for buffalo horn or should I look elsewhere? Here's what they look like.

I think thats a great price

+1 to the above - that's a decent price not to mention some good looking blanks.
Also, you're on the right track with 6" lengths. Any longer (if you can find it) will likely have lots of excess to trim /waste, and any shorter will likely be too short for most razors.
EDIT: just realised that price includes shipping, so that's better than decent in my books

Horn is fairly easy to work with, I just finished one with black horn that I made by hand. The only issue I had was getting the blanks flat. I boiled them for a while held together with rubber bands, after they were dry I gave them a neatsfoot oil soak. That came close to flat, but I clamped the ends to my table with a couple Popsicle sticks under the middle and left them like that for a day or two.

Horn is probably easier than wood to work with because you can use wet and dry paper. When working with wood I prefer the heavier kinds (Ebony & Rosewood for example) because they tend to have a better balance plus you can use something like a few coats of finishing oil and they're good to go.

Whatever you choose do some reading about the ideal thickness of scales and try not to stray too far otherwise your scales will look clumsy.

Stefen you did some nice work, but that's no surprise!!!

Thanks for sharing and helping those of use who are limited in our resources see what can be done by hand!!

Again, those examples are examples of some very nice work!

Now I get to wait for my scales to arrive...

I looked on Maggardrazors and saw his pinning kit. Seems like that's the easiest way to go. Since I'm probably going to only do 3 or 4 razors, I doubt I'll need to get more washers or longer bars....I really hope I don't get addicted to restoring razors....I'm already developing RAD, does the same thing happen to you when you restore razors??

It's probably worse than RAD, once you realize what you can do, you want to learn more, and whereas you just put in a bid or swipe a card to get the razor, you spend a full day on a resto, sometimes more. And then you want to do another.

Crap...

Is that why I've been drawing scales for my other razors already? And why I'm looking at different belt sanders that would make restoring easier....crap....how do I already have this too?? I'm not even done with this one yet!

Originally Posted by AustinCQC

Crap...

Is that why I've been drawing scales for my other razors already? And why I'm looking at different belt sanders that would make restoring easier....crap....how do I already have this too?? I'm not even done with this one yet!

Don't look at belt sanders for scale making,look at a disc sander and an oscillating spindle sander first JMO