Thread: Curious about approximate age of my J Rodgers and Sons

Honed it last night. Two pieces of tape and it turned out very nice. Shaved smooth. Got a funky looking set of bevels on it now though. May have been a 6/8 at one time, closer to 11/16ths now. Appears to have made many a trip across a hone.


Would like to know what the experten think of its age. Tail is rather short compared to most razors but a bit longer and nicer than that of the "stub tailed" genre.


Cutlers to Their Majesties etc..


Thanks in advance,
Willie

Well we know the absence of England is pre 1890, and hollow ground after 1870 i believed, maybe somebody can get a closer dating aproach!!

Check out this Rodgers thread here. The OP has some dating info in his text that may help you out. Other than that you'll have to wait for manah.

So I was going to say that I'm a total sucker for Irish point blades, so I went googling to make sure I was using correct terminology.

I'm going to continue to say I'm a sucker for Irish point blades but also dip my reading eyes in a bucket of icewater after wading through the flamewars.

Anyway! It's pretty hard to figure out a narrow range for when that would've been made.

It's definitely Victorian. ("Their Majesties"). It's probably made before 1891.

Does that odd band on the toe wrap all the way around? Think it's original?

My wild-ass guess is 1850-1880. The ivory definitely has a nicely aged look, so I'd bias my guess toward the earlier end of the range.

I wouldn't be shocked if it were 1840's, but it doesn't seem likely to me.

Seems to that the country of origin was stamped on razors beginning around 1897 or 1898. I don't know how accurate that info is but it was posted awhile back on this forum.

I'm sure someone will come along later and verify the exact year that it began.

Jerry

On that country of origin thing ...... i had some J. Rodgers that had the "Made in England" stamped in a semi circle/half moon shape, around the tail end of the original stamping. Kind of wrapping around as if they had taken some older blanks and stamped that on there as an afterthought. I think those blades must have been done right around the time the requirement for country of origin was instituted. I don't have any pix since I don't have any of those anymore but there are pix of them around.