Sometimes, you buy stuff secondhand, at auctions, at flea-markets, from collectors’ fairs, and you look at it, and think:

“Gee, it’s nice!…Pity it doesn’t work…”

That was the situation I found myself in when last year, I bought a very nice, antique straight razor with ivory scales. The scales were in decent condition…but the same could not be said for the blade housed within them. Ground almost into nonexistence, and as blunt as the flat side of an axe, no amount of a makeover was ever going to revive the career of this blade…which was a shame, because razors with ivory scales are beautiful..and hard to find.

The good news is that straight razors are very simply constructed, and I was certain that with the right equipment and tools, it would be possible to remove the worn out blade, find another blade from another, trashed razor, and replace it.

Fortunately, cheap, broken razors are all over the place, and earlier this year, I stumbled across a perfect candidate for my project at my local flea-market. For $5.00, I nabbed up a square-point BENGALL in excellent condition…bar the fact that the scales…which I judged to be some kind of celluloid…were literally crumbling to dust.

I tore the broken scales off with pliers, and using a file, I ground off the flange around the top of the pivot pin. I popped out the washer, pulled the whole pin and all the other washers out of the scales, threw the scales away, and started in on the blade, polishing away all the rust and staining – once I installed this blade in the new scales, this would be impossible to do, so it had to be done now.

The next step was more delicate: Removing the worn out blade from the ivory scales:

I taped the ivory, and then set in with a file to grind down as much metal as possible. I peeled off the now paper-thin washer that held the pin in place, and with a punch and hammer, I drove the pin out through the scales and blade. This loosened everything up enough to swivel the scale out of the way, drop the pin out, and remove the blade, all at once.

Unfortunately, the ivory, being as old as it is, was more fragile than I had anticipated…which is saying a lot, because the ivory was already wafer-thin and delicate as hell! As I half-expected, the ivory split across the holes drilled for the pins. Apparently, restoring this razor was going to be a bit more challenging than I had first hoped.

Simply gluing the ivory back together would never work – it would have to be reinforced. I found the thinnest strips of steel sheeting that I could find – barely thicker than tin-foil – and cut out rectangular strips which I could use to glue the ivory onto, and then glue that back onto the main body of the scales.

One benefit of the steel strips being so thin is that they’re very easy to cut with ordinary scissors – or fold, or tear…or even punch holes in! So I punched two holes in the strips so that they could still hold the ivory together, while having somewhere for the pin to go through.

I glued everything back together and left it overnight to set. The next step was relatively easy: Putting the razor back together, with the working, replacement blade.

To prevent wear, friction and jamming, razor-blades are inserted into straight razors very carefully in the following manner:

First: A washer or collar goes onto the pin. The head of the pin is “peened” or hammered flat so that it flares out at the end – this stops the collar from dropping off.

Next, the collared pin is fed through one hole in the scales. Another washer is dropped in on the other side, so that the scale is sandwiched between two washers. The razor blade is then dropped in on top of this, and a third washer is added on top of that. This means that the razor is always sliding against smooth metal – not against the body of the scales, which could damage them, cause friction, or jamming.

The other half of the scales is fed onto the pin through another pin-hole, and then a fourth washer is popped in on top of that, when the pin comes out the other side.

So far, so good. I set it all up and left it to dry overnight.

In the morning when the epoxy glue had hardened and the steel strips and ivory had all been bound firmly to the body of the scales which they had broken off from, it was time to do the last step of the reassembly process: Affixing the blade permanently to the scales.

Traditionally, this is done by filing down the head of the pin until it isn’t more than two or three milimeters above the top of the scale. With the collar or washer in place to provide protection, the head of the pin is – once again – peened over.

This is where I really was rather worried – peening the pin would mean putting the razor on my jeweler’s anvil, lining it up, and then belting the top of the pin with my ballpeen hammer to flatten out the head and mushroom the edge over the hole and washer, to keep everything in place.

Normally, this is easy – hold it still – and literally hit the nail on the head. Or it would be easy, if I wasn’t trying to fix a razor with fragile, brittle, antique ivory scales…

I had serious misgivings about whether the ivory would be able to withstand the shock of the hammer-strikes, but in the end, my fears were unfounded. That said – peening the top of the pin enough to hold the razor together, and stop the collar from popping out – took considerably more effort than I had anticipated – and I was hammering away at it for quite a while!

In the end, the results speak for themselves. The final touches were a bit of filing and sanding to clean up the glue and ivory, and of course – a very, very thorough honing and sharpening, to get the blade back up to snuff…

The results aren’t perfect, but the razor is intact, functional, elegant, and has a rustic, vintage charm to it. The razor swings smoothly on the pin and the scales have held together admirably, considering what’s been done to them. The blade opens and closes flawlessly, and is perfectly centered, preventing any possibility of the edge of the blade striking the scales – which is a huge pain in the ass, because it would indicate manufacturing faults – none of which exist here!

A beautifully polished, sharpened blade has been given a new home, and a pair of creamy-coloured ivory scales have been given a new lease on life.

In this final photograph, you can see just how dramatic the difference is between the two blades – the original German one, made in Solingen (on the left), and the replacement Bengall one, made in Sheffield, (installed between the ivory scales, on the right).

The installation of the new blade was both easier, and more difficult, than I had initially expected it to be. Easier, because the steps required to make it happen were not really that difficult to execute, but also more difficult, because of the unexpected steps that had to be taken, over the course of the refurbishment.

Thanks for reading my latest restoration project! I hope you enjoyed it and will return again soon. Fixing antiques and breathing new life into them has always been one of my big hobbies. This isn’t my first antique restoration, and certainly won’t be my last – but it is my first restoration of an antique straight razor! Despite the setbacks, I think we can confidently call this a success.

Here, you can see the completed razor alongside the two other ivory-scaled razors in my collection…