Thread: Calling on the historical experts, I'm stumped! An unassuming mystery razor.

I've been continuing to dig around on this, mostly because the whole story of Stodart, Faraday and the razors fascinates me. I found some more information about CSquared's razors. In his June 26th, 1820 letter to Professor M. de la Rive in Geneva, Faraday wrote:

Originally Posted by Michael Faraday

Perhaps the very best alloy we have yet made is that with Rhodium. Dr. Wollaston furnished us with the metal, so that you will have no doubts of its purity and identity. One-and-a-half per cent. of it was added to steel, and the button worked. It was very malleable, but much harder than common steel, and made excellent instruments. In tempering the instruments they required to be heated a full 70º F. higher than is necessary for the best cast steel, and from this we hope it will possess greater degrees of toughness and hardness. Razors made from the alloy cut admirably.

Voidmonster,
Another great piece of information! Where did you get it from?

I should have that Rhodium razor honed to confirm how admirably it shaves;
It's a pity I cleaned the I&O one.

Thanks for the research work.

Originally Posted by Voidmonster

I've been continuing to dig around on this, mostly because the whole story of Stodart, Faraday and the razors fascinates me. I found some more information about CSquared's razors. In his June 26th, 1820 letter to Professor M. de la Rive in Geneva, Faraday wrote:

Originally Posted by CSquare

Voidmonster,
Another great piece of information! Where did you get it from?

I should have that Rhodium razor honed to confirm how admirably it shaves;
It's a pity I cleaned the I&O one.

Thanks for the research work.

The letter is several of the omnibus editions of Faraday's correspondence. It's in both 'The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, Vol. 5' and 'The Life and Letters of Faraday, Vol. 1'

And yes. I think it's very important to science that you carry out the follow-up and see how their razor shaves after 190 years.

Ah! And now I've dug up the most pertinent bit yet:

Originally Posted by Michael Faraday

writing to Dr. Percy, March 17, 1863
My Dear Percy, -- It is very pleasant to see your neat handwriting again. I am quite tired in looking at my own unsteady, uncertain characters and sense. I wish I could have the further pleasure of helping you, but I have forgotten all about the paper on alloys, and cannot at all call to mind where any of the specimens are. I rather think they all went into Mr. Stodart's hands, and must be lost by this time, for I do not know how to trace them.

As near as I can tell, he had given one of the razors he and Stodart made to his father-in-law 7 years before that letter. However, I don't consider the source for the date of that gift to be particularly good.

Also, most places say the razors that Faraday gave his friends were from a platinum alloy. I think that's wrong. Faraday and Stodart didn't think that the wootz/Platinum alloy was as good as the wootz/silver alloy. I think he was most likely giving friends razors made with palladium, which he thought very, very highly of. They did make 3 pounds of it.

I found another interesting bit.

In Sheffield Steel and America: A century of commercial and technological interdependence by Geoffrey Tweedale it is reported that Faraday and Stodart worked with the Sandersons (?) and Charles Pickslay for the practical parts of their experiments.

I then found some pictures of Pickslay razors, including this one with some very familiar wooden scales



So, I strongly suspect that the two Stodart/Faraday razors were made by Pickslay, which also means that they were almost certainly not made later by Stodart for commercial purposes, but are definitely artifacts of their experiments.

The picture of the Pickslay you found does have something in common with the Stodard "twins".

I do have a Pickslay in Peruvian steel, but that looks very different.

Originally Posted by CSquare

The picture of the Pickslay you found does have something in common with the Stodard "twins".

I do have a Pickslay in Peruvian steel, but that looks very different.

Ah, yes! I'm pretty sure those were a good deal later. In my searching, I came across a picture of a very similar blade in near-pristine condition.



All the Pickslay pictures I've posted here come from this page.

Originally Posted by CSquare

The picture of the Pickslay you found does have something in common with the Stodard "twins".

I do have a Pickslay in Peruvian steel, but that looks very different.

A bit more info concerning Peruvian Steel - Green, Pickslay & Co started as ironmongers in the High Street. Green left the company in 1823 and a partnership was formed with Adam Padley in 1828. 1829 Pickslay, Appleby & Bertram of the High Street were the sole manufacturers of Peruvian Steel Cutlery. Adam Padley was a shoe, butcher knife and fender maker from Rockingham Place whose company was absorbed by Charles Pickslay. In 1834 he registered the PERUVIAN mark and proclaimed himself as the only maker of Peruvian Steel, made by a process "only known to Himself" until he died of apoplexy in 1844. In 1824 Green Pickslay & Co., having experimented with the alloys recommended by Faraday, sent him a steel specimen alloyed with silver, iridium and rhodium . . . “furnished by Mr.Johnson, No 79 Hatton Garden”.

Johnson's in Hatton Garden was began by Percival Johnson in 1817 (NB: some sources quote 1822 as the move to Hatton Garden), an "Assayer and Practical Mineralogist" valuing gold bars by assaying the exact quantities of the metal in a bar, guaranteeing quality by offering to buy back them back. Johnson had his own smelting yard in London and it was he who alloyed the rhodium-iridium-silver steel for Pickslay's - out of this specimen two razors were made and presented to Faraday.

Regards,
Neil