Thread: hives stubtail

I was really surprised to find it there!

Smith's Key seems to have been a set of engravings of old Sheffield tools intended to be used by dealers. IE, they could use Smiths' Key to find plates of the items they had for sale and they could buy those and use them when hawking their wares to retailers. But it's all a bit speculative, since the book itself contains zero information in it.

The copy in the Sheffield library has some letters between the publisher and the engraver (Joseph Smith), as well as an incomplete price-list, entirely of products made by Richard Cam and Marshes and Shepherd. But the book has MANY things that neither Cam nor M&S made, and M&S didn't exist when the book was first published. So it's all a bit mysterious. Still, hundreds of engravings of old tools!

There are a couple other catalogs like it, but I don't know of any way of seeing them short of visiting the Victoria & Albert museum in London (which I plan to do if it's remotely feasible). Supposedly, the Victoria & Albert museum has a similar catalog of tools from 1780.

In gallica you can also find quite a lot of old recipes using various "mots clefs", as "recettes parfumeurs" "formulaire savons" "bay rum"...

I'm sure there's also plenty of informations about old ways to work the metal, whetstone and many more...

I really need to learn French.

I've heard that's not that simple

I myself wish I could read latin. I'm working in my university's library (of medecine and pharmacy), and there's a huge collection of books from late XVIIth and XVIIIth.. Late XVIIIth they were using french (and they're SO COOL to read, like a narrative story), but late XVIIth, they were still using latin, and I'm so curious about what was written in them...

I found an old book about the art of shaving (or the art of making soap, I don't remember) in Gallica, from late XVIIth, in old french. I'll have to find it back so I can share it with you.

Got it : "Le Parfurmeur françois"

Not exactly about making soaps, but interesting anyway.

Various books and recipes :

Bay Rum

"Lotions contre le feu du rasoir"

Making brillantine page 71, with perfumed formules

Formules shaving soap

Manuel du savonnier 1852

Manuel du parfumeur 1825

Sorry for going outside of the main subject

Originally Posted by Thaeris

I've heard that's not that simple

I myself wish I could read latin. I'm working in my university's library (of medecine and pharmacy), and there's a huge collection of books from late XVIIth and XVIIIth.. Late XVIIIth they were using french (and they're SO COOL to read, like a narrative story), but late XVIIth, they were still using latin, and I'm so curious about what was written in them...

I found an old book about the art of shaving (or the art of making soap, I don't remember) in Gallica, from late XVIIth, in old french. I'll have to find it back so I can share it with you.

I'm actually better with Latin than French, but that doesn't mean I'm any good at Latin.

Mostly, I know profanities in other languages... But then, in Dutch my name is profane!

Originally Posted by Thaeris

I myself wish I could read latin.

At one point in my life I could read / write / mostly speak Latin. I've mostly lost it now but really should try to get it back...

A little bit of a necro-post here, but since this old thread is one of the ones that turned up when I was doing an image search on Hives razors, I thought this would be a good place to stick this.

So I now have two of these razors, and ScienceGuy has one, and I’ve found images of an unmodified 4th, so I can say, definitively, that there was a very particular style of scales used on them!



Sadly, my newest one is in pretty bad shape, but the scales are good.



This one is ScienceGuy’s, and his picture.



This one I found on the web.


Also, for fun, when I was cleaning up my newest Hives razor, I drilled out the pins and accomplished something I’ve never done before...



I drilled entirely through the pin, but it still held the razor together!



Needless to say, those pins are an odd size and a good deal larger than 1/16th (or 5/64th for that matter).

But that’s beside the point. The point is Joseph Hives made his razors with, seemingly, a single style of scales.

And also I now know it was Joseph Hives who made them.

He was born 1774 in Ecclesfield (a bit north of Sheffield).

In 1790 he apprenticed to Joseph Roberts, a cutler in Sheffield for the customary 7 years but ended up buying his freedom in 1803, just before marrying Jane Powell.

So that apprenticeship is a little unusual in that he started late at age 16. It was also a little irregular the he bought his freedom years after his apprenticeship should have ended, but that sort of thing happened here and there. Time has just swallowed up the reason why it happened. Maybe he was a slow learner, or he liked working for Joseph Roberts, or he spent a lot of time sick... There’s no way to know at this distance without finding direct records of it, and that’s pretty unlikely for such a minor figure.

1803 is a very reasonable year to assume for the earliest razors he made.

He died in July, 1808, which put a bit of a damper on his production.

So that’s a very, very short career.

Here's one that I restored, I kept it for a while it was a great little shaver.

Originally Posted by celticcrusader

Here's one that I restored, I kept it for a while it was a great little shaver.

Ah yeah! Yours turned up pretty high in the search list. I'd guess it was made toward the end of his run. The 'Warranted' part just ... sorta kinda feels like a later refinement.

Any idea what the original scales were like?

Originally Posted by Voidmonster

Ah yeah! Yours turned up pretty high in the search list. I'd guess it was made toward the end of his run. The 'Warranted' part just ... sorta kinda feels like a later refinement.

Any idea what the original scales were like?

Zak, the scales it came with were not original they were a black celluloid completely wrong shape much later period, that was one of the reasons I changed them.