Thread: Picked up another Packwood

Got this off the bay a few days ago. Packwoods Superior stamp on the front of the blade and Damascus Fine Steel stamp on the front tang. 6/8" to 13/16" near wedge grind with a smile, spanish point, and a peaked spine. Some active rust in a few spots and some pitting that will need to stay. The edge looks pretty clean, just need to decide what I'll do for scales. If anyone has some pics of originals I'd really like to see them, I found a post with the same stamps, but the images were no longer viewable.

I'm guessing this is from around 1800 or so.

The Damascus Fine Steel tang stamp took me down a new rabbit hole for a bit. I suspect it is a marketing stamp, but if I'm wrong and it was made from a wootz ingot that would be cool. No patterning in the blade, but I just started cleaning up the tang last night (really doubt there will be a pattern).

1830's, most likely.

His family kept up trade on his good name for a good long time after his death, and in fact the great majority of Packwood stamped razors were made after he was gone.

That was the first time I'd ever seen that stamp on a Packwood, too, so that's an especially neat catch!

That style spine was called swaged (which is easily confused with an arris spine, but the swaged is slightly convex on the sides and the arris is flat).

Also, definitely not actually wootz.

It's very hard to say what the original scales would've looked like since I've never seen that particular style blade before. Many Packwood razors had extra ornamentation of some sort, be it an escutcheon plate or one of those large, clasping tin wedges that the scales slot into.

Thanks for the info. Looking a little closer at the tail shape, I agree it's probably closer to the 1830 or so time frame. Wasn't exactly sure how to describe the spine thanks for the correct nomenclature.

Packwood was an interesting character, I find these razors interesting. As a bonus I also like how they shave.

I was 99%+ it wasn't actually wootz, but would've been cool if it turned out I was wrong.

I suspect there's at least one other with that stamp that's been on this forum (https://sharprazorpalace.com/razors/...tml#post706559) but the images are not visible anymore. I haven't decided what to do with the scales, I've half a mind to do something a bit less traditional given the flamboyance of Packwood's marketing.

good pick up, not wootz