Thread: What is your most rare straight razor?

Raw HYDE!

Here is one I think is really nice looking. Wilkinson Half? Hollow in what I believe is ivory. Blade is just over 3/4 with a lot of hone wear so it was probably at least 13/16 to start with.
I really want to get this one shaving, but I think the stabilizer needs correcting and I don't want to make the hairline crack worse while using it. For now it is in the "to do" razors.



If I ever get my Franke St Paul finished I'll post it. Older American hollow ground.

I had never seen that before! Nice ivory!
I was gonna bid on one like that as I have a set of Nowill scales. Wanted a pair.
Not a Nowill..Close!
It's good to let others get some. I pass on lots. No Dough!
At least here we can see some?

Originally Posted by sharptonn

Raw HYDE!

How about Wm Hyde

Originally Posted by Wolfpack34

All that bicycle riding has paid off my friend...looking good my friend!

I'm working my butt off to get back to 25 miles a day, 5 days a week. I got real lazy last year.

Originally Posted by JOB15

I probably have some really rare stuff but I am not aware of their rarity .

Hear is a few which I believe are rare ish.

An Allisons
<...>
Attachment 286868

I’ve got a few razors by Edward Allison.





He had a pretty brief, but interesting career. His first directory listing was in 1825, and he seems to have died in the early 1830’s, or gone so catastrophically bankrupt he was never heard from again. At the very least, his workshop went up for auction then.

Besides cutlery, he also ran a pub, The Barrel.

In the interest of getting more cool, odd stuff to come out of the woodwork... I offer up a bunch more oddities.





John Elliot was Joseph Elliot’s brother. The duration of their partnership is murky, like a lot of the early history of the company. At some point before the Great Exhibition, John formed his own company making fancier goods (apparently, from extant examples). Intersting to note that the frameback has the tang decoratively blued. A lot of it has been worn off, but you can see that the crocus-polished blade has a kind of rounded dark end at the tang — that’s from bluing. It’s on both sides.



Continuing with the rare Elliot theme... Any one of these isn’t quite so rare, but it took me forever to get examples of all(?) three cities, and the New York had the wrong razor in the scales, so I had to spend a bunch more time tracking down the exact model blade Elliot used in the New York razor. One of these days I’ll finish restoring all of them.



Two distinctly unusual Elliots. The one on top uses the Hammer mark that the Cutler’s Company designated for handmade items, the one on the bottom is from the late 1700’s, making it the earliest Elliot razor I’ve seen. That would’ve been Joseph’s dad (who was, I think, also a Joseph)





(I know KCB5150 also has one of these little fellas)

The bizarre Attkinson Brother’s BEAR IN MIND travel razor. It’s so neat and compact! So convenient to carry! SUCH AN INCREDIBLE PAIN TO HONE AND STROP.

But neat, all the same.

In the second picture is a more normal razor for comparison (It’s a C. Barrett copy or license of the Ragg Plantangenet Razor — y’all collect razors from Fleet Street, right? Right?)



Everybody loves a great freaking machete of a razor, right? Here’s mine. The Palmer ‘Magog’ razor (from about 1810 — that’s George III’s GR, not George IV!). Shown with my 9/8 W&B FBU for scale. This behemoth took a bevel that’s about half a millimeter wide, and it shaves like nobody’s business. Likely actually made by the Ragg family, speakin’ of them.



James Crawshaw was a major light in Sheffield cutlery and noone remembers him now. I’ve got these three razors made by him, and they are indeed made of sterner stuff than most all his contemporaries. Even those delicately carved ivory scales are about double the thickness of any ivory scales you’re used to, they feel tougher than any horn scales. The original owner of that one was a publican who owned the Rose and Crown in Penistone. It’s still there!

The one in pressed horn scales has the later-style ‘MAGNUM BONUM’ blade etch.

And that last one has the neatest washers I’ve seen — they’re stars!







A very, very early Greaves interchangeable blade set. Made before 1801!

Sadly, it’s been rescaled in vulcanized rubber at some point. I haven’t put it in something more appropriate because I don’t know what kind of scales it would originally have been in! So maybe somebody else has one of these with original scales.

Here are some more I dug up.

A Wade & Butcher, Magnetic Steel For Barbers Use:



Another Wade & Butcher, 1820s Patent Tempered Steel, but stamped on the top of the spine with W&B:



Presumably Joseph Tiercelin, a cutler in London, of which I've seen references but not many examples passed around:



And some razor-related but not strictly razors.

First edition of the 1787 Gales & Martin Sheffield directory:



A first edition of the 1769 Perret book on shaving (one of two I now have... I have a problem apparently):



An original 1802 treatise by Benjamin Kingsbury of London (a rival of others such as Savigny), which I'll have to make a separate post for because there are so many gems inside:



And finally, what I believe is a plate that is part of the etching process for late 1800s razors. This is a brass plate engraved with the positive of a hollow ground design appearing on blades, which would presumably have been loaded with ink, transferred to the blade, after which the blade was coated with a resist. The resist resisted the acid used to do the etching, but the resist did not stick to the ink applied to the blade, so only the letters got etched:

These three Greaves probably aren't too rare, but are nice examples nonetheless.....

Same Kingsbury, Scienceguy?