Thread: William Gilchrist: Brass frameback

I don't really think I could be happier with this one.

The first thing I noticed was that it's a William Gilchrist stamped brass-frameback razor with Joseph Elliot's corporate mark. I've seen a lot of Gilchrist razors, but none with Elliot's mark on them.

For a while, I thought that William & Samuel Butcher bought the cross & arrow mark from Gilchrist (as well as the bow mark), but now I'm not sure. Elliot most definitely didn't buy the mark from him!



What I couldn't really see until I had it in hand was that it'd only ever seen very minimal honing. There were sparse, light scratches on the lowest part of the spine and nothing else. No flattening at all.

The bevel, with one layer of tape (must protect that brass frame!), is about 0.25mm wide. I don't think it'd been honed since the 1850's. A few passes on my Shapton 1k, a little Frictionite 00, a CrOX stropping, and it shaved beautifully.



I've done relatively minor cleaning & polishing on this, but nothing major at all. You're seeing it in more or less the condition I got it in.

It was an open auction on eBay and no one else bid.