Thread: Help identifying old 'India steel' wedge razor

Hi I picked up an old razor for next to nothing a little while back now, and thought it would make a good candidate for restore practice. I was wondering if anybody recognized the tang stamp and could tell me a bit more about it>
It certainly is not without problems,, for one the wedge has either fallen out or it was pinned without one? Whatever the case I think it has caused a pretty deep split in the middle of one of the scales (which I would really like to save). Either that or at some point somebody made a cut into the handle because it seems too deep to be an accidental 'nick', but thankfully it only goes about 2/3 way through the tough old scales.

I'm sure a lot of people would recommend I throw out the scales and replace, but I have a thing about trying my best to preserve any scale/handle material that was once attached to a living creature :)
The blade is heavily pitted and looks like its had a clean at some point as there is no patina,,, just heavy pitting! :(
Looks like it will be a nightmare to reduce it down, but part of the aim of this is to see how far gone is too far gone with a wedge blade.
The tang stamp sadly has parts totally missing but the rest of it is bold. It looks like either a 'B' and a crown or 3 crowns , and it looked to have said, "fine India steel razor" , no maker name, no Sheffield ect.

I've tried to take a few pics (sorry went a bit picture crazy) to show the tang and general condition,, I took a pic of it next to another old razor, an ivory handled wedge razor to try show that this one is quite small for an old razor,, Also most wedge blades I've seen tend to have the classic curved spine and edge, but this one seems to be dead straight on the spine and the edge which is what I was trying to show in these pics. Also the it looks like there's a huge crack across the blade in the pics,, its just a deep scratch (another mystery about this razor). Should sand out to be quite faint.

Thanks in advance guys any info and advice would be great :)