Thread: WILL & FINCK - San Francisco

Thought I would post another early San Francisco cutler's razor besides the Michael Price that I posted. This razor is a Will & Fink. Will & Finck started in the early 1860's to around 1930. They had started out as cutlers and competitors of Michael Price by making razors, Bowie knives, and other cutlery They later on, besides their cutlery, sold and either made or contracted for barware, gambling items, badges, sporting goods.... just about anything that made the old west "the old west". They eventually created a relationship with Michael Price where he would supply them with some of their cutlery. This hard rubber scaled razor may have been made by him. Either way this simple razor feels and looks good to me.

For a longtime SF area resident like me, a San Francisco branded straight razor is a very cool thing indeed. I wonder if it survived the 1906 earthquake?

I think the address on the box, ( if its the correct box) indicates that the razor should have been made in the early 1880's ( I think I looked it up once). That's way early enough for the SF earthquake of 1906. I do not know if the razor would have been in SF during it. SF was the only large city, port and center of commerce around the Mother Lode during the Gold Rush It was the main place for supplies and wares in the west to be bought and taken to the gold fields, Central Valley and Nevada during and after the Gold Rush

I do have additional in interest getting razors that were made fairly locale - at least from the centeral coast of CA. They are hard to find. The only other SF razor I have is a Bauer - its not very impressive or very good looking - at least to me.

I have lists of California knife makers or cutlers, but I have not had any luck in finding a list of which of them actually made razors in California from the Gold Rush to 1920's or early !930's. For some reason my interest drops off on anything after that.

Nice It's always cool to have local items in a collection

How nice to have a Golden Gate stamped razor! Priceless, actually. I grew up near Baltimore and have one razor from a turn of the century importer there, with a Baltimore stamp. Not a bad shaver, either! I live in Tucson now, but fear that there never was an importer or manufacturer of razors here. This is a great hobby in many ways-razors are so often marked in ways that bring historical events and places to mind.