Affordable Scales

I have come to acquire five straight razors during my time wet shaving, all honed and shave ready, however a few of them need new scales, wedges, etc. I have searched around a bit and have found plenty who do custom scales that look amazing, but shelling out $70-$100 per razor doesn't fit into my budget. I was wondering if there was a company or person that could provide a more affordable alternative to custom scales.

http://www.whippeddog.com/products/view/do-it-yourself-scales I have a few of these sitting around in case a see a nice razor on ebay with broken or no scales.

We've done threads in the past where we make cheap scales out of found or recycled material. This can be done very easily, and with no experience. You can make scales out of lots of different things. Someone made scales out of PVC pipe, that look amazing and you'd never guess there weren't professionally done.

I've made scales from pex tubing, acrylic bar trays and pvc tubing. All are easy to work with few tools, basically a drill and hand sanding. I'll post pic of them later this evening.

maggards has replacements

ebay also has semicustom scales

Also look on eBay for razors with good scales and bad blades. Sometimes they can be had for next to nothing.

Cheers, Steve

wetshaveyyc said:

http://www.whippeddog.com/products/view/do-it-yourself-scales I have a few of these sitting around in case a see a nice razor on ebay with broken or no scales.

Click to expand...

Those are probably exactly what I'll end up grabbing until I can fund some custom scales.

TheVez2 said:

We've done threads in the past where we make cheap scales out of found or recycled material. This can be done very easily, and with no experience.

Click to expand...

Could you point me in the direction? If I can find the time I would love to be able to make my own I think that would be awesome.

_Jut said:

Could you point me in the direction? If I can find the time I would love to be able to make my own I think that would be awesome.

Click to expand...

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showth...es-out-of-plumbing-pipe?p=6433153#post6433153

The searchbox is your friend!

PVC scales: http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/412232-First-Set-of-Homemade-Scales-out-of-plumbing-pipe

contest - http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/255055-Heck-yes-we-need-more-competitions

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/258003-to-late-for-the-contest-but-look

Not the best pic but these are the scales I've made from "found material"

The red, white and blue on the right are PVC, Hot Pex and cold Pex.
The clear pink was from a bar tray and the darker one in the upper
left is another tray, root beer colored with black streaks, resembling a faux tortoise shell.
The PVC is crude, it was my first rescale
The Pex does not take a high polish but has a nice soft feel.

TSS sells some nice looking wooden ones that are not badly priced too.

I think I am going to make my own at some point, my only problem is having space to do any serious work.