Thread: Do I have a vintage TI?

Fixer uppers? Thats a NICE grip of razors!!!

Originally Posted by mparker762

Doesn't matter. You have a Fontenille. It may well be that they purchased blanks from TI, or vice versa, but it is what it's stamped as.

I have a Dovo and a Chronik with the exact same size, grind, shape, and weight, down to the details in the jimping and polish. But that doesn't mean the Dovo is really a Chronik or vice versa.

I realise I have a Fontenille. What I'm concerned about is the steel quality. If they are the same steel and grind, then they should take a similar edge, not so? And the TI is made from best quality sheffield silver steel. So in theory, would mine be too? I'm not out to prove I have a TI, I'm out to find history about my razor.

Please define shoulderless with pics - Badger & Blade

Second post, second picture... poster goes on to say: I actually have that exact blade, the only difference is that mine is shoulderless actually.

And this one the tang and point match.

Originally Posted by khaos

If they are the same steel and grind, then they should take a similar edge, not so?

Given moderately decent steel then the heat treatment is the most important thing, much more than minor differences in steel quality, and we have no evidence that Fontenille farmed out their heat treating to TI (or vice versa), or that they used the same heat-treating process as TI, or that they used the same standards as TI.

As another example. dubl duck is simply a label, they had no manufacturing facilities of their own. I've heard that their razors were made by a variety of different manufacturers over the years, including at various times ERN, Puma, and Dovo. Yet all of the dubl ducks are uniformly excellent, and we never try to claim that one wonderedge is really a Dovo or the other a Puma (except for the pumaducks, but that's another matter entirely). The key is that no matter who made them, they were always made to the exact same (very high) standards, and that is the important thing, more so than the exact steel used or who ground the blades.

But with Fontenille and TI, we simply don't know what techniques and standards Fontenille used and how they compared to TI. It's possible they were even higher than TI, and maybe they eventually went out of business because they refused to lower their standards to reduce costs the way TI and Dovo did. But unless we can show that Fontenille was simply another brand of TI's, made and treated at the TI plant to TI specs, we can't say that they're in any fashion "really a TI".