Thread: Scales with Shield?

Hi Guys,

Just wondering if anyone has some scales with a shield on them? I've got a razor that I'd like restored and am thinking the shield would be a nice touch. There's one going on the bay atm but it would be a shame to separate them from their razor.

Cheers,

Here's one of mine with a shield - and other things.

An old Lund, Cornhill, razor that I gave to a friend:



Scales are ivory. Thermoplastic materials like horn and tortoiseshell could have the metalwork heated and pressed into the scales. Another method was to solder pins on the metalwork and make indentations on the other side of the scale to accomodate solder, but the class work was done with a specialised tool called a two-legged parser. It could cut recesses exactly, and to almost any shape you liked:

]

Of course, the shields had to be made first along with a metal aperture acting as a guide for the parser:



Regards,
Neil

Great post Neil, very interesting an early version of the router, the shoulder of the bit rides the template to form any shape, love it, just like a triangular bit used in a dow drill creates a square hole, hence square nails.

illustration below shows bit riding the template cutting the given material.

That's exactly it, Martin! Nice illustration.

Some people still use them for putting the bosses/shields in pen-knives, etc, but I guess that laser cutting is now the norm. Still, the old parser is much cheaper - not much more than a few flattened rods of steel, a bobbin and a hone-made bow!

Regards,
Neil

To see the parser in use go here PBS - Woodwright's Shop: Schedule play video number 2807.

Good Olde Roy Underhill, such a happy fellow, thanks for posting the cool video Osdset.

I'm currently waiting for this to arrive. A fancy French ivory scales with silver ornament at the bottom. Pretty sad that the blade is broken at the pivot

Sad about the break - however, as it is french and of that period it would not have had a tail anyway - the blade did not extend past the scales when closed, so it looks like a candidate for rounding it off, drilling a new pivot hole and re-pinning. Could even cut the scales down a bit - possibly - if the blade closes too far away from the wedge end.

Lovely razor, anyway.

Regards,
Neil

Thank you Neil for the good advice, I was thinking the same thing but I will probably be too nervous to try and re-shaping the scales since its ivory and IMO I consider it as a very fragile material that can be damaged very easily.
I've posted this one before, do you think it can be a proper candidate as a replacement for the blade? It's also French but not sure if matches the era.


I've played a little bit with the photoshop to see how approximately it should be look like -