Quote Originally Posted by Neil Miller View Post
Here are some razors which show a sort of progression of hollow points, from round tip with no hollow to full hollow, to square with no hollow...

5: Howe
6: Joseph Rodgers
7: E A Berg
8. Fontenille
9. unknown maker, early, marked "silver steel"
10: Harrison Bros & Howson
11: unknown, french made

The Joseph Rodgers nos. 2, 3 and 4 show a vestigial hollow/notch, useless for detail work like going around nostrils, ears, etc, and as each notch sits well below the top of the scales, useless for opening, too - it must have been just a design feature in this case.

Regards,
Neil
It'd be interesting to see this razor line up according to date. It's easy to line up shapes in a progression. Most of us have been doing that since we were about two (my two year old son does that), but it's not particularly informative.

Razors 5-11 clearly have notches that could serve a function, whereas the others simply have a concave shape, useful

I wonder if, with the info we have here in the collective of SRP, we could date the earliest notch point razor; that is a razor with a clear and deliberate notch such as those pictured 5-11. Placing that within the timeline of history might prove enlightening.

Quote Originally Posted by JimmyHAD View Post
Kidding aside, the first thought when I saw the early ones with a very slight notch was that the purpose may have been to hold that end of the blade in a jig/fixture to facilitate working on it.
I think that's a pretty interesting idea. I've never seen a blade with such a little notch in the end of it, but there's no point or purpose for putting it there unless it's purpose involves either a) identification (someone marking the blades as theirs), or more likely b)manufacture (perhaps even only a trial run on a new system that was short lived).

I have to say though, with the notch points I have, I can't even envision how they could be useful for detail work; and they're full size notches (J. Wost, C&S, etc.)

FWIW,
Jim