Thread: The Wall Of Shame

Originally Posted by RezDog

The seller is actually quite well known in the straight razor community.

Ok, now who could it be? Very nice looking stone.

I'm fairly certain that it belongs to Sham.

There is no solid basis to call anything that... There is absolutely no way to nail that id down...

A lovely Kropp anybody?

Offered for auction is this lovely vintage cut throat razor

The German made KROPP razor is offered in good condition with some obvious signs of use and wear in keeping with its age

The razor comes complete with its original box which also shows signs of age and wear (see photos)

Lovely Vintage KROPP Cut Throat Razor With Original Box | eBay

Apart from the glaring chunk missing there is also a 3/4 cm ish crack near the toe. scales are ok though

Poor kropp...

Originally Posted by RezDog

I'm fairly certain that it belongs to Sham.

Sham is the man. I would trust his word. Even with my recent outbreak of HAD it's out of my reach. Maybe if I....... I need an outpatient treatment center quickly.

Cutlers Green Stone REDUCED | eBay

Another offender... this isn't about honing skill or passion for the hobby, it's the fact that nobody knows what these stones were exactly... It's complete speculation... I don't even think Henk Bos offered any suspects in his books and he was the gold standard for cataloging this sort of thing...

From the late Neil Miller on a thread about this subject: I don't think that Magpie's or Olivia's are CGs. If they are, then I have bought and sold numerous examples of them.

I have not come across one single reference that says that jewellers used Cutlers green hones - I guess the clue is in the name - 'cutlers'. On the other hand, most jewellery supply stores sold sticks of TOS and WOA for jewellers use - intaglio print makers also used them. They were used to polish metals in clock escapements and that sort of thing - until comparatively recently one jewellers suppliers in the UK still had a stock of TOA sticks, usually 5/8ths in section although the width could vary. They stopped selling them approx 5 years ago. The metals they were used on were not particularly hard, and one reference for CG hones states that they were used for lancets, etc - hard steel implements.

It reminds me of the origin of the Devonshire oilstone and the Devonshire bluestone - mention of which was made by a stone collector in a journal when he was talking about his own collection, and which has remained speculative ever since. Most of the references to CG stones boil down to two or three particular works, the most notable being Turning & Mechanical Manipulation by Holzapffel. One other source mentions sparse blueish dots. I don't know about anyone else, but to my mind the dots on the two offered examples are anything but sparse or scattered.

Shiny speckles - why not? It seems that CGs were probably mined from specific areas along one continuous vein of igneous hornblende/slate - a greenstone dyke abutting a slate layer which was metamorphosed by the igneous hornblende. Examples from similar sites along the same vein or dyke in Snowdon are more or less crystallised in nature, the less crystallised ones showing shiny specks of feldspar and other minerals. LIs, which come from this region, are very crystalline in nature and often have percussive or bulb/shell-shaped fractures on the surface, along with the slight scattering of dots. Their cousins, the CFs, are similar in nature coming from similar beginnings, but are characterised by ferric deposits that give rise to the familiar markings.

Some works say that LIs are harder than CFs and would have replaced them if it was not for the relatively high price of the LIs. Given this, the area they come from and the way the markings - if present - are not that obvious, it is not too much of a leap of faith to speculate that the CG was in fact some form of LI.

From the speckling in the two given examples I would lean more towards TOS than LI - sure, some LIs have a lot of speckling, but it tends to be fainter and harder to see than with most, if not all TOS hones.

A lot of stones that were used as honestones were never produced in enough quantity in the British Isles to make them either enduring or well known, and as Vasilis says there may well be many more out there that we do not know about. One old work from the 1840s alludes to a yellowish hone, glassy in nature, from the environs of Snowdon. Another from not too far away was white. As far as I am aware no one has seen these either, just like the CG. Maybe a documented example exists in the rock collection of a long defunct amateur mineralogist - but who knows? If that amateur was a razor-nut we surely would have read about it, but we haven't. If none of us can say with any certainty what one is or what one looks like it, it seems certain that they will remain the stuff of legend.

Regards,
Neil

Originally Posted by Hacker7

For that kind of money the buyer should know what he's looking at. You would think.

There's a whole community of straight razor collectors that don't buy them to use them. They buy them for the celluloid or to put on display with other antiques. For display that would be a nice piece. To use it would take some work.

Originally Posted by Steel

There's a whole community of straight razor collectors that don't buy them to use them. They buy them for the celluloid or to put on display with other antiques. For display that would be a nice piece. To use it would take some work.

Straight Razor Scales, salt and pepper shakers, Hummel's.

It is the possession that gives the pleasure.