What are these scales...?

[mycarver]

And how they feel? You know I’ve handled hundreds of scales .
Close my eyes and my polished horn, my tortoise and many celluloids all feel basically the same.
My ivory feels identical to the bone scales and quite very much like wood finished in CA. Some are very nearly identical to the point I said “ these feel like ivory “ ,,, and it’s wood. How useful is this?
Making a call , especially leading with clues can and does bias an objective opinion and it’s subjective .
How things “feel” varies significantly person to person . Just like eye witnesses if not worse. 10 people have 10 views. It’s a known phenomenon. That to me doesn’t fly.

 

[Legion]

You say that your polished scales feel like tortoise. Yes, ok. I think they feel a little different, but that is subjective. But answer me this. when you have found the old vintage horn razors in the wild, aged and unrestored, how many of them were glossy like tortoise before you buffed and polished them?

But I'm willing to bet that the tortoise scales on the Heljestrand you showed looked pretty much the same when you got it as in that photo? And your other tortoise scales, did they need polishing to make them glossy like horn does, or were they already pretty glossy when found, maybe just needing a clean?

I have an unrestored tortoise razor that is almost 300 years old. The scales have never been restored other than a wipe with a damp cloth and they are still glossy, like your Heljestrand. I've never had an antique horn scale have that kind of gloss until it got buffed and polished. Just like the OP's razor.

At the end of the day, at the rate Oli is collecting, I am sure it wont be long before he finds a confirmed tortoise razor and can compare them side by side. That is the best way to make the call one way or the other.

 

[mycarver]

Yes in fact I did polish these.
Here, from donsbarn a pro curator or tortoise are some exerpts and before and after pic.
Depending on conditions and use why can’t they be dull. Is a natural shell high gloss? No.
Are your nails, the same material high gloss? No. But if you sand and polish shell, horn or even your nails with they get glossy? Yeah. Being a “soft “ natural product and not diamond hard can they get dull?
Yes.
See the last pic? Probably not man handled like a razor but it too got dull and faded after how many years.the only thing ( besides some gems) to maintain luster over many years, basically forever , is gold.
Looks different after polishing doesn’t it? Hmmm . Seems a rather pampered piece yet got dull.
Depends the life it lead.
Everything in nature returns to dust. Sorry but to think something made out of keratin( fingernails) won’t get dull or not maintain deep luster is just,,, odd to think and hard for me to believe.
And note, he says repair, SUBSTANTIAL deterioration ( layers you and I spotted?) and polishing. I’m guessing that means it doesn’t always look pristine and glossy .
And speaking of the splitting, did you ever have a fingernail split? Many have and that’s still on a living person. Old horn scales split and if horn, fingernails and tortoise shell as are made of the same material why can’t a turtle shell split?
So he too doing this for a living has to repair and repolish like any of us. BtW t mine came with 2 others that got polished as well. Look stunning today!
Sorry , some might be out of sequence.
But look at the color and pattern of that panel

 

[Legion]

@cotedupy , it won't help you much as far as being able to touch and feel them, but if you have a day off and want to see some tortoise scales "in the flesh" to compare yours, I remember the V&A museum had some on display last time I was there.

 

[cotedupy]

Well, if it's naturally mottled horn, it's one of the prettiest examples I've seen and fairly unusual.

This I think sums it up quite well.

I'm now 99% certain theses scales are horn, but the colour and pattern a little different to any of the horn I buy for ferrule material, or from any other razor scales I have. And certainly similar enough to some of the pics of Turtle @mycarver has posted in this thread, for me to have some doubt originally.

As he said - the colours in horn tend to streak along the lines of the grain as in @Legion's mug, rather than be blotchy as they are on at least one side of my razor scales. Also the blonde in mottled horn tends to look like that mug, rather than the light yellow-caramel on my scales, which in terms of hue is a very good match for turtle.

But they're actually horn. Certainly not dyed, they just happen to look quite a lot like turtle, and were probably I imagine selected specifically because of that. In order to fool people like me 150 years later. Here's some pretty conclusive evidence I found comparing an old post on SRP against one of the pics I took originally, which shows the darker of the two scales (on the right) in front of a very bright light.

They're a very good example of why I love making things from and having things made from horn. The detail and variation is something you just don't get to the same extent in other types of natural scale material. I'm quite pleased with these.

 

[mycarver]

Ahhhh! Very cool. Love it. That backlit piece is defining. Thanks . Nature can throw curveballs . I swung and I missed.

If I had stayed with my first call, I’d have been right but missed a lot of neat stuff. Incredible what nature has to offer.
Thanks guys . This was fun. Really enjoyed it.

 

[cotedupy]

Ahhhh! Very cool. Love it. That backlit piece is defining. Thanks . Nature can throw curveballs . I swung and I missed.

If I had stayed with my first call, I’d have been right but missed a lot of neat stuff. Incredible what nature has to offer.
Thanks guys . This was fun. Really enjoyed it.

Yeah, they definitely had me questioning what they were, especially after seeing some of the pics you found. Like you; I work with horn quite a lot, and even having them in hand I wasn't certain until looking again at the backlit darker scale, and comparing to that SRP post.

One day maybe I'll stumble across some turtle scales, but tbh - I find mottled / multicoloured horn so beautiful and fascinating to look at that I'm quite happy just to have more of that!

 

[mycarver]

You are so right.
But thank you for this experience. As
I said I started digging a rabbit hole. The more I dug into this the more fascinating areas I found.
Scientific studies I could barely wade through with spectrographs , composition analysis etc. studying shell vs plastics? Then off to restorers who do this regularly. What a job!
All because of what?
Razors.
This hobby has led me to things I never imagined. From stones to steel, brushes and making them . Learning how to make my own acrylics. Natural materials and how to properly handle them. Carving and etching steel techniques. Scrimshaw and inlaying. Sanding and polishing techniques and how to not damage etchings. And for what? Just to restore a razor?
Wow.
A side note and darn if I can find it again was a video of a company making shoe horns ( yeah, that’s all) out of horn. Watching them cut the stuff , get it to a rubbery consistency shape it etc. and the outcome was stunning.
Now I can turn horn into a pretzel if I want, then change it back again. And it’ll stay.
Again. Thank you . This was a huge success for me I’m glad I was wrong because I had a blast.

And hopefully, if anyone followed this, picked something up along the way. That’s key!
All because of razors.