Thread: Another oddity: William Dadley

If you’re attuned to the Old Sheffield aesthetic, the first thing you’re likely to notice is the tail. The second thing is the slightly unusual scale shape.

Here it is compared to an 1810ish Wilson & Co.



You can see that the scales have a very slight downward curve as they bend toward the pivot, sort of like gunstock scales.

So let’s open it up and see what we’ve got here.



That’s not a very 1810ish blade style. I know it superficially resembles the 1700’s type razor (and it might be! I’ll get into that in a bit), but what it most closely resembles is this pattern which was made primarily by Wade & Butcher and Fred Fenney, as you can see.



It’s not a perfect match (they really, really definitely weren’t made by the same people). The earliest reference I’ve seen to the Wade & Butcher version of these razors is 1851. Fred Fenney died in 1852, so that’s a reasonable guess for the early end of its production. (Fenney’s version was labeled ‘Adamantine Edge’).

That date is right out for the Dadley razor though. He died in 1846.

Before getting into that, there are some more unusual features.



The washers are a different alloy of brass from the standard Sheffield. You can see it has a higher percentage of copper.

That’s not all that’s different about them.




The two sets of washers are different sizes. In those two pictures, you can see the pivot washer is just about a perfect size-match for the Greaves, but the point-end is a little bit bigger.

That’s a feature more commonly seen on older (pre-1800) Sheffield and French razors.

By this point you’ve probably guessed where I’m going with this.

It was not made in Sheffield.

Some of you — the knife folks — may have had bells go off at that name, too. I’ll get into all that in the next post.