Thread: 1700s razor?

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

That yours ? Inquiring minds .........

not yet.......this is just a pic I found googling, love these razors! I don't think my pocket book is large enough to allow this beauty into my like. come to think of it, I don't even have a pocket book, hmmm....

Jimmy...that pictured W&B "Ottoman" belongs to "professorchaos", Henry, a Mod at B&B. I've had over 800 razors pass through my hands in the last 7 plus years and I have never seen one in person. I believe it is one of his most prized.

I'm about 75% certain it's a shop-class special.

It might possibly have been a production razor that was heated to cherry hot and bent into that shape, but I kind of doubt it. I'll be very surprised if it has usable geometry or temper. I hope I'm wrong, since I saw what it sold for.

Apart from that curled up point, the shape of the blade is most similar to a style Greaves sold a lot of around 1830 or so.



John Barber had one in the same basic style:



Rodgers made one, clearly riffing on John Barber:



I've probably got 2-3 other examples with that style heel, but those are the ones off the top of my head. I'm pretty sure most Sheffield producers made similarly shaped blades. I've seen one labeled 'The New York Razor'.

To date I know of 4 existing, original Ottoman Egyptian razors, and bizarrely, one has Egyptian misspelled on the blade. They're quite mysterious, but I'm confident they all post-date 1870.