Quote Originally Posted by ScienceGuy View Post
That might not help (well and surely won't help for curlers, unless the master cutlers were also masters of lobbing stones around on the ice) - it's quite possible they were made somewhere else in England, or even outside of England. There were lots of other manufacturers at the time who might not be recorded in Sheffield. These razors mostly came from (correct me if I'm wrong) Sweden from recent auctions (and a lot of stubtails seem to come from there nowadays) so at some point they made their way there, or some may have been made there (Nils Grönstrand, for example).



As to the lack of tail, some makers didn't put on large tails, some English makers put on huge tails, sometimes razors have pivots broken off and redrilled to make no tails, it's very hard to say anything directly from just that. You have to see a reference to the mark somewhere documented to be sure. As to the pipe razor, there were numerous makers who used pipes as marks:

http://straightrazorpalace.com/razor...ml#post1020699
Just wanted to say, the stubtails out of Sweden are often originated from Sheffield, I have a couple of Smith's, Lin(d)ley's, Bengall's, Elliot's, Shepherd (crown WOLF), "GB", Norris,... from Sweden!

Nice reference to that tread, but those "pipe" - markings are not only from the 18th century I'm afraid, there are markings from the 19th, even from the 20th century...