Thread: Thiers Custom Restore in Pre-Ban Elephant Ivory

Noswad sent me this old Thiers to work on.. It is a Thiers "Welcome" that had some very faded etch that marked it as "Pour Barbaras Duras".. Thiers took a rather novel approach to this For Heavy Beard razor from what I see the razor had minimal hone wear, when I got it and I was looking at the spine thickness in relation to the blade size, and honestly I think the idea here was a slightly steeper bevel (which in theory would be stronger).
I polished out the blade, then took on working a set of the Pre-Ban Ivory that Noswad sent me for the scales...

I had to make some decisions on how to work them, compared to "Vintage Ivory".

First I mic'd every piece of Vintage Ivory scales I had sitting on the bench they ranged in thickness from .060 - .750..
I mic'd the pieces of Ivory that I had selected ~.128 and ~.121 so I used the belt sander and evened them up to .100.. I cut out the Classic Thiers double diamond shapes and used the best looking parts of the grain in the Ivory for 2 Bookended scales..
Next I sanded these smooth to 400 grit and had to make my next decision on a direction to go.. The "Wedge", on near every single set of Vintage Ivory I have seen, they used a lead wedge, mostly IMHO to help balance that razor and those super thin light weight scales.. I didn't have those restrictions so I chose to go with a splash of color and a Turquoise wedge...

Next decision was about the pins which I knew I was going Nickel Silver, but was I going to use washers or not ???? I looked at it both ways, I even walked away from it and worked on another razor. Finally I decided to go with what I know works, and chose a small SS washer...

The final thickness on these came out to be .093 after all the sanding and polishing, BTW I used up to 600 grit then switched to a Buffer and Plastic polish and finally Ren-wax and a soft cloth...The warm glow that Ivory has is hard to beat and also hard to catch in pics...

the teal against the ivory looks SO cool. i dig it

That is an elegant looking set of scales and blade. Very well done!

Great job Glen. That thing sure looks great, from the work on the blade to the gorgeous scales. Another superb job. Thanks for sharing.

Beautiful Glen!

That turned out superb. Beautiful razor.

beautiful, love the wedge really sets things off

As always, great work. Classy if I may say so!!

Working with the classics there G . Very nice

Beautiful work Glen. That wedge gives just that neat little splash of color.