Straight razor blades are usually made from carbon steel, stainless steel, or some variation alloy such as silver steel and Damascus steel. The general difference is that stainless protects better against rust and is harder, which means that it will hold its edge better than carbon steel, but is more difficult to sharpen when it does get dull. Alloys will vary in their advantages; some have even better rust protection and some just make the blade shiny. However, their use is limited; carbon and stainless are the most common metals by far.Blade width is the distance between “edge” (the sharp side) and the “back” (the part opposite the edge) and is measured in eighths of an inch. A ¾” blade is called a 6/8 blade. 5/8 is the most common size. Few men like anything smaller (you know how we are), but the smaller blades (usually no smaller than 4/8) are easier to maneuver in the tight spots like the upper lip and just under the chin. Some men like the really large blades, 7/8 or 8/8, also called “Lip Loppers”, because you can let the weight of those blades do the work and just slice right through your hair. The disadvantage to bigger blades is that they are less flexible (less “giving”), so there’s a higher chance of cutting yourself, unless you’re very careful and experienced.
Scales are the handle pieces; two scales riveted together form the handle. Scale material comes in five general categories; plastic, wood, bone, fossil, and exotic. Each category, of course, has several or many individual items. For instance, “wood” can mean redwood, cedar, snakewood, bocote, olivewood, kingwood, ironwood, and many others. Plastic includes celluloid, polypropylene, and “tortoise shell” because those are always faux shell and made from plastic. For bone, I’m including ivory, horn (usually ram or buffalo) and oosik. Fossil scales can include bone fossils, fossilized ivory, and fossilized oosik. Exotic actually means anything that doesn’t fit in the other categories, like mother of pearl, micarta (a laminate that one could argue is actually a plastic), and metal, like steel or brass. Now bear with me on this topic of oosik. As you may or may not know, almost all male mammals have a baculum, or penis bone, with the exception of humans (of course), horses, cetaceans (whales & dolphins), rabbits, marsupials, and hyenas. Oosik is the baculum of native Alaskan carnivores, specifically pinnipeds (walruses, seals, and sea lions) and polar bears. Oosik is often used in Alaska for making knife handles and I’ve seen it used for razor scales as well.
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