Quote Originally Posted by kevint View Post
hey, good point on the first two as I have never looked into what India and Silver are. It's maybe just me, but some of those early alloys with enough elements to differentiate from simple carbon, but lower than HSS are simply some of the best for edge tools we have. It looks like marketing the new high tech materials of the day but was it actually a ploy?
I am not saying that the steel that they were producing didn't include those elements or that the companies were being dishonest. Rather then ploy I mean a marketing technique. What I am saying is that the average Joe wouldn't have a clue as to what any of those labels really meant. Especially the farther back in time that you go. When I was an Ironworker apprentice I read a book called "Metals and How To Weld Them".

Among other things it described manganese. It is an alloy that when put into steel causes it to harden as it is impacted. The book said that it was used in the buckets on draglines and in other high impact applications . Why it would be beneficial in a straight razor escapes me but Wester Bros and others branded some of their razors with that tag.

Now we can google it and come up with the definition in seconds but before the internet the only people who would have any idea what any of it meant where those who were involved in metallurgy. In the tattoo business an old fellow I knew had a sign over his work station that read,"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance baffle them with bullsh*t". That is what I think that a lot of those razor stampings are about. Nothing wrong with that. they are just trying to compete in the marketplace.