Post your vintage wood scales

If I got the thing right the common believe is that wood was not used by vintage straight razor manufactures, the wood scales we find on our vintage are therefore replacement scales.

The reason would be that they did not know how to stabilize wood.
If that is the case that is a very strong argument for me.

Nevertheless I have some wood scales on vintage straights that interest me.
And I wonder if replacement scales sometimes was made by a vendor and maybe even used as guaranty service solution.


Wood scales:



The upper one is made from one piece of wood. The lower has amazing shape and the 2 sides look very symmetric.



The 2 above, I like them but they do not compare with the first one in shape.



This scales has shape as common plastic scales. And the shape is good and the sides are symmetric. The coating colours of, have to remove it if I want to use it.


My guess is none of this scales are very old.

Hmmm, never thought about that before. Every day you learn something new i suppose

I have seen a couple of vintages from Thiers with wood scales.

Here is a Le Grelot.

The wood used was Palissander (Rosewood) which is pretty stable as-is.
I am not sure how popular those were back in the days, but what I know is that very few made it thru time.

totorlekiller said:

I have seen a couple of vintages from Thiers with wood scales.
Here is a Le Grelot.

Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing!
Is it yours Lr Grelot? Any idea how old it is? It looks very nice, blade looks new.
Makes me wonder how much celluloid scales makes the blade corroded.

Below scales in some pressed material, perhaps a mix. The usb microscope picture shoving the end of one scale, seems to be 3 or more layers as core and some fibrous material round. But this blade is corroded with no celluloid...

i think that argument is a bit bogus, for hundreds of years, ships, furniture, gun stocks, and most building where made of wood. the US constitution is made of wood along with the HMS victory and both are still around. heck the VASA ship is about 90% intact despite spending 333 years sunk. i think why we see more examples of the horn, bone, and such as scale materials is that the razors where owned by higher class citizens or by barbers. well taken care of, and not just thrown away. just my two sense anyway,

*stefan* said:

Thanks for sharing!
Is it yours Le Grelot? Any idea how old it is? It looks very nice, blade looks new.
Makes me wonder how much celluloid scales makes the blade corroded.

Click to expand...

Yes, the LeGrelot is mine. I had to clean it up a bit when I got it, but no bad pitting.
As for age, it does not look very old. I think it was made sometimes between 1930 and 1960.

tetraodon said:

i think that argument is a bit bogus, for hundreds of years, ships, furniture, gun stocks, and most building where made of wood. the US constitution is made of wood along with the HMS victory and both are still around. heck the VASA ship is about 90% intact despite spending 333 years sunk. i think why we see more examples of the horn, bone, and such as scale materials is that the razors where owned by higher class citizens or by barbers. well taken care of, and not just thrown away. just my two sense anyway,

Click to expand...

That is an interesting point of view. I guess a straight razor scale made of wood that was used did not stand time as well as for example ornaments that weren´t being touched by wet hands repeatedly.

The small ship worm that attacks the wood has difficult to survive in the Baltic Sea because the low salinity why Sweden has more well-preserved wood remains than many other countries.
Wood-degrading fungi and bacteria have the ability to eat up the wood. In low oxygen there are
bacteria specialized. These can under low oxygen values break down large parts of the cell wall so that only a "skeleton" is left. This process is fortunately slow.

Norway, Gokstadskeppet:
It was in a large burial mound ca. 45-50m diameter. The mound was made of sand mixed blue clay.
http://vikingship.se/oldviking/gokstadS.html

totorlekiller said:

Yes, the LeGrelot is mine. I had to clean it up a bit when I got it, but no bad pitting.
As for age, it does not look very old. I think it was made sometimes between 1930 and 1960.

Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing! My knowlege about wood scales increased

I found another couple of wood scales, the one at the top.
Well, that was what I thought......


After looking with loupe and usb microscope I now think both are horn scales. Not 100% sure though.
Photo taken through loupe:

And usb microscope:


Any thoughts? Wood or horn?