Thread: Razor sorting criteria ?

Originally Posted by randydance062449

Hey guys,

I finally have all my razors in one place and I will be oiling them with Rig Gun Grease and mineral oil and then sorting them into different categories but I would appreciate your help in deciding what categories to use.
Please note that I have a ton of razors, about 1,000 of them.

This sounds like the perfect job for an RDBMS (Relational Database Management System). Although it might sound complicated, the setup is straightforward, and you've already defined the elements: national origin, manufacturer, blade size, grind, tip, scale material, condition, item number, etc. The difficult (read: time-consuming) part is entering the information which, thankfully, does not need to be done all at once.

The beauty of an RDBMS is that, once the information has been entered, you could access data for an individual razor, or extract data for a group of razors, based on one-or-more of their elements — sorting keys — i.e., German razors with half-full grind, French tip, and ivory scales (if such exist in the database).

I assume you're running a version of Microsoft Windows. There are any number of RDBMSes available to you; a well-known and proven one is MySQL, which is free and available for Microsoft Windows.

I am not (nor have I ever been) a database administrator, but I did set-up one or two in another life. It's not that difficult, and is certainly worth considering — especially with the number of razors you've got. There are also "how-to" books about it.

An RDBMS beats the heck out of several shoebox-fulls of 3x5 cards.

FWIW...

If it were me I would list them by makers.

When you get multiple razors by one maker then break them down further.
Say you have 25 Wade Butchers, then break them down by size, point shape etc.

A general category, like restorables would be handy too.

This is probably more work, but I think that in the long run it would make it easier to pinpoint exactly what you have.

Just my 2¢

Pete <:-}

After reading J.B. 's post, it looks to me that a good spreadsheet is in order.
I have never done one so can't be much help with that.

Pete <:-}

To give you an idea of what I have to sort here are some of the containers of razors .....

Restorables ....

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Some of the Sheffields ...... each of the red cigar boxes has at least 10 razors.

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...and some razors that are pretty good condition. The top display case are my "oldies" the rest are from the collection I purchased from Geezer.

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Can someone please change the orientation?

It looks to me like you have too many razors. Yea, I know that's blasphemy around here.

If I had that many razors unless I was going to put them in displays around the house I'd be whittling them down to maybe a couple hundred.

If you don't like my solution feel free to tell me to stop flappin my yap.

Otherwise MS Office lets you make databases you could use.

It's just a terrible affliction!

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

It looks to me like you have too many razors. Yea, I know that's blasphemy around here.

If I had that many razors unless I was going to put them in displays around the house I'd be whittling them down to maybe a couple hundred.

If you don't like my solution feel free to tell me to stop flappin my yap.

Otherwise MS Office lets you make databases you could use.

Your solution is about right.