Hello all I thought I would share some images of my latest restoration, it’s a Wade & Butcher brass frame back. The guy I bought it from said it was about 125 years old how accurate do you think that date is? I've cleaned it up and given the old boy a new set of custom ebony scales with a brass double pinned wedge. It’s now shave ready and will keep nicking faces for a long while to come.
Thanks guys, note to self. When I put a razor like this on eBay put a bloody reserve on it otherwise it might go for a stupidly low price like oh £62!!!!!!
Those scales are interesting, how is the balance on this setup? BTW, did you fabricate the scales yourself?
Hi kcb yes I made the scales myself and the razor was quite well balanced if a bit heavy on the front but the brass wedge helped balance the hole set up a bit.
I've been thinking of trying to fabricate some duplicate scales for a razor out of a hard wood like ebony or mahogany. What did you seal the wood with, if anything?
Hi kcb, I would use ebony as us don't really need to do anything to it just polish it up and your good to go, its a bit harder to work but its worth it! With mahogany i tend to give it about 5 or 6 coats of antique oil and rub it down in between coats, a good source of wood that I've found is guitar headstock veneer its usually between 3-5mm so the thickness is about spot on and one piece gets you enough for 2 sets of scales. I get my ebony for £6.50 a piece 200mm x 90mm x 2.5mm thats a bit thinner than I usually like but ebony's such a hard wood its fine. I just got a delivery this morning of purple heartwood, ebony, snake wood, walnut and teak so stand by. One more thing with mahogany I've never really been happy with the colour, its always a bit light for me and I don't want to stain it but today I tried scorching it with a blow torch and i must say I'm really happy with how it turned out I'll upload some photos in a bit as I'm just honing the razor at the moment and it doesn't look its best!! Ok I finished honing this little 5/8" J. R. Torrey with the scorched mahogany scales what do you think?
I think it looks quite good, actually. I think with woods that have uninteresting grain like mahogany, you can probably also compensate with things like stacked washers and a nice shiny, metal wedge, or even a contrasting wood.
