Thread: 146 Regent St -- A very strange razor.

Originally Posted by BobH

That is one interesting find with a unique way of operating. A beautiful razor in all respects. Someone put a lot of effort and thought into making it. I hope you enjoy it for a long time.

Bob

I've seen quite a lot of razors at this point, and this one's a new trick on me. Even the Greaves locking blade isn't particularly similar, since it just had an arm attached to a third pin in the back of the scales. The thing I'm really not looking forward to with this razor is attempting to clean it. Normally, I completely disassemble razors to do that. I ain't so sure I wanna go that route with this.

Originally Posted by Martin103

Very interesting razor for sure, I truly believed the razor was from Rowlands & Frazer but the "Tellier" part is pure speculation on the perhaps possible. Wondering how this razor will hone with the different spine thickness?

I see you found the one trade ad for them, from the theater magazine.

The speculation about Tellier is really mostly for my own amusement -- I know that's not a thing I can ever get certainty on (and I can't even come up with wild ideas for how this razor got to Ohio, and the eBay seller hasn't answered my question of where he got it).

I feel pretty confident about the Rowlands & Frazer (or possibly Rowlands & Sons, depending on age) identification, but I spent a lot of time last night with a UV flashlight and every conceivable image manipulation and I'm about 65% confident that there was a T, in a larger die, just above 'E' in REGENT St. If I match the size and typeface, KENSINGTON lines up perfectly. However, only the T matches. The tiny remnants of other letters really don't.

There are forensics kits for recovering serial numbers from guns. They're not obscenely expensive, they're reusable and I have one or two other razors where I wouldn't mind pulling a lost stamp. First though, I'd probably attempt to do homemade magnaflux enhancement, which at least is completely non-destructive!

As for honing... I took it to the hone last night, not to fully set a bevel so much as just see where the line would run. It very quickly took an edge that would knock hair (though still has a few tiny chips in it), and the bevel is about 0.5mm wide. It's TINY. Completely out of proportion to what appears to be hone wear in the pictures. My best guess is that what looks like hone wear is actually just someone grinding off rust (all parts of the blade have the same scratch pattern).

Didn't pick that one up because I think it's an ugly duckling, but man that is cool. Thanks for the informative post!

Originally Posted by Voidmonster

...There are forensics kits for recovering serial numbers from guns. They're not obscenely expensive, they're reusable and I have one or two other razors where I wouldn't mind pulling a lost stamp...

Hi Zak,

You can buy Frys Reagent your side of the pond - under 40 USD for 150 ml. You can also make it up yourself with copper chloride crystals, conc. hydrochloric acid, ethanol and water (with the usual caveats of starting with the water and adding the ingredients in reverse order) but as it is no joke having an accident with concentrad HCl, I won't give the amounts of each ingredient.

It supposedly works best with bessemer-type metals, and poorly or not at all with low nitrogen steels unless it is modified. I have looked at some of the results on the net, and they are quite startling, like this one of a restored echo of the ground-off stamp from a firearm:



Apparently you have to polish the steel, apply it, let it work, rub it off and polish the steel again. repeating the process as you go. Not all the marks may appear at once - it depends on the force of impact over the size of the original die, so different marks may appear at different layers. Typically we are talking of a max. depth of 1.2mm or so. The reason it works is that the steel is altered at the point of impact - its crystalline nature changes from that of the surrounding steel.

Interesting stuff - I have the necessary chemicals and blances, so I might play about with some myself if the need arises!

Regards,
Neil

Neil,

I'm currently gearing up for another round of long travel, and I haven't had a chance to dig into it yet, but my plan is to try the magnaflux method first if it's at all viable without specialized equipment. Mostly because it's completely non-destructive.

At first blush it looks like this'll be a pretty easy method -- I've got an absurdly powerful neodymium magnet (and some less absurd ones too) and this whole hobby of honing razors makes it very easy to get a suspension of ferrous particles.

But I should probably get some HCL for restoring etches anyhow, and then if the magnaflux trick doesn't work, I'll move on to the bigger guns.

I'll update here as I do the tests. If the magnet trick is as easy as that article makes it sound, that could be a truly excellent way of pulling lost marks off razors.

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

Interesting stuff - I have the necessary chemicals and blances, so I might play about with some myself if the need arises!

Regards,
Neil

Careful, Neil! Remember the still fire?

Tom

Originally Posted by sharptonn

Careful, Neil! Remember the still fire?

Tom

I had a sense of foreboding the moment I entered that, Tom - I expect you are awaiting dire consequences, now!

Regards,
Neil

[QUOTE=Voidmonster;1068937 ...I'm about 65% confident that there was a T, in a larger die, just above 'E' in REGENT St. If I match the size and typeface, KENSINGTON lines up perfectly. However, only the T matches. The tiny remnants of other letters really don't... [/QUOTE]

Zak - here's one of Kensington's trade cards - note that the first name is abbreviated - no hint of a 'T' there...



Regards,
Neil

PS: I just looked at the Magnaflux link you provided and a few other websites, including youtube videos, etc - seems that the National FireArms Forensic lab use it to recover obliterated marks, too. Very interesting - thanks for posting that!

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

Zak - here's one of Kensington's trade cards - note that the first name is abbreviated - no hint of a 'T' there...



Regards,
Neil

PS: I just looked at the Magnaflux link you provided and a few other websites, including youtube videos, etc - seems that the National FireArms Forensic lab use it to recover obliterated marks, too. Very interesting - thanks for posting that!

Thank you VERY much for Kensington's trade card! That'll help!

--

I jumped in with both feet and did a poor job with the magnetic attempt, but it did get me microscopically closer. You can now definitely see that there are letterforms above 146 Regent St.



You can't make ANYTHING out on that image, but you can tell there were letters on it.

I hadn't read anything at all about the magnaflux process and I just took a couple of neo magnets, my DMT 1k, a broken razor blade, and an old pipette we'd used to give medicine to our cat years ago.

The magnet went onto the back of the blade, I used the old razor and the DMT to make a lot of steel dust and then I experimented.

Pointlessly.

Because I need to polish tang smooth to get the effect, and I'm out of time for experiments now.

I did learn some things about the process though. Stronger magnets seem to be a little bit better, but I have the distinct feeling you can easily overdo it. I didn't used anything resembling my strongest one -- just the magnet from an old 3.5" hard drive, and I felt like it was borderline too-strong. The particles couldn't move around much due to the high strength of the field. Water worked alright, glycerine worked better. Oil will probably work best. No point in using the alcohol.

The way forensics labs do magnaflux is to polish the surface and use ferrous particles in an oil suspension. The surface is magnetized, the oil applied and then it's vibrated. I'm just going to use my ultrasonic jewelry cleaner for that last part, and I ought to have time to do this all tonight.

Just wanted to congratulate you on an unusual find. Thank you for sharing it!

No advice forthcoming. You seem to have it covered with strategies I'd never heard of until now. Thanks for those too!