Gillette, and other companies, plated razors so that they looked expensive, provide protection (at least for the chrome and nickel finishes), and gave a common colour to the razor. However, I think at least part of it was that the available coatings weren't very good for something as actively used as a razor. Nitrocellulose lacquer is a great product. It goes on with thin coatings, doesn't require a lot of time between coatings, and the coatings meld together into a seamless whole. In that way, it's like shellac (the true shellac, not the polyacrylics that there's at least one company selling as 'shellac'). Shellac is as thick or thin as you want, depending on how much alcohol you use, and the coatings blend together. The downside to shellac is that it is easily damaged by alcohol (after shave, anyone?) and when exposed to water, it turns white until fully dry. Lacquer isn't as vulnerable to water or alcohol, but is a continually changing surface, and not horribly flexible. For metal, neither of those was a big problem for the expected lifetime of the razor. Unfortunately, neither of them could keep brass or copper from corroding for long periods of time, due to the surface abrasion and crazing. So, if you wanted to have raw brass, you'd have to strip it eventually, then recoat (there are a lot of clock hobbyists that have gone on ad nauseum about it on other forums). So, since I'm not afraid of work, I decided to take the NEW that had a disintegrating lacquer finish, and see what I could do. For this experiment, I just used the water based Minwax PolyAcrylic that I had left over from a woodworking project. I tried dipping the head, but 'as is' the stuff is too thick for dipping. I had to wipe away part of it to keep drips from forming. The handle has been coated three times, and I heat set it for an hour between coatings. (and it sat for a day after one coating). The base plate has not been coated. I need to soak it in lacquer thinner to get the last of the deeply ambered lacquer out of the teeth. Here's the before (pre-cleaning), post cleaning and polishing, and coating. (Ignore the yellow razor in the top picture. That's the Otto Roth) I like the way it's come out. I do realize that there is still stuff in crevices, but I used no power tools, and this is a first attempt. If I want to try it again, it'll be easy enough to strip.
I used Acrylic Lacquer for a couple of my handles and the bottom plate on some of my three pieces. Don't know if on the head it would hold up, but they've held up well so far on the handles. At least it protects the gold from wearing off.
If it's acrylic, it's not lacquer. there's PolyAcrylic, and PolyUrethane. (Well, and Cyanoacrylates, but those are very brittle). I do realize that lacquer is very much a portmanteau word at this point, however. Gillette used nitrocellulose lacquer on the various razors, as best as I can tell. Especially after WW-I, there was a huge stock of guncotton that needed to be used up, and shellac was hard to get due to problems in SE Asia. It should hold up on the head/handle/baseplate just as well as it did for Gillette.
