Thread: The Truth About The Barber's Notch

Originally Posted by BigJim

No charge involved. I was merely pointing out that if a person was looking for a progression from round point, to hollow point, to square point you'd need to know the years. No offense intended.

Offended? - at being compared to a two year old - perish the thought!

Seriously, the pictures were just to show various types of concavity, not a time-line, which could roughly be figured out by my list of makers names if anyone wanted.

As for an actual time-line being informative, I agree - but informative in a very limited and quite unhelpful way. Some of the makers listed span many decades, so ascribing an actual date to a particular razor would be a guesstimate at best. We also have a maker like Rodgers going from hollow/dreadnought/Sheffield notch/round/Sheffield notch at various stages throughout their history, so the Sheffield notch (aka barbers notch) would appear, disappear and reappear, thus giving no hint at a time-related progression.

"Sheffield notch" was the original term used in Sheffield and goes back a very long way. That kind of rules out it being a special feature to aid barbers for me.

Those vestigial notches in the three JR razors appear at the half way width of full hollow ground razors - quite a thin, brittle, hazardous place to attempt a DIY notch, in my opinion. Most DIY ID marks I have seen have been confined to scales. The same hazards would also apply to the notch being used to hold the blade after it had been heat treated/tempered - a thin brittle area like that argues against it being used in that way.

I agree that we may never know. Even if there was once a good reason for it, it seems to have become lost to us, and later instances of it tend to indicate it as being just another style or fashion.

Regards,
Neil