146 Regent St -- A very strange razor.

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SRP member ScienceGuy pointed this razor out to me on eBay because it is very odd. I then bought it.

Because it is very odd.

The escutcheon plate is beautifully engraved Tellier.

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The scales are ivory, and you might have noticed that they have rather a lot of pins in them that aren't purely decorative.

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The spine is very thick for a razor of this size (a scanty 5/8), the wedge is not a wedge, there is a brass liner under the ivory and ... what on earth is going on with the tail? I originally thought it had been ground off and reshaped -- bizarrely, but I was wrong.

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Something else is going on here.

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The scales are closed at the bottom.

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The pivot end.

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The first thing you notice when you open the razor is that it's held closed, so you pull, there's a slight give and then the blade swings smoothly, freely out. And it's got a very oddly shaped tang.

And the rest will be in the next post, because LOTS of pictures...

Appears to be a French razor with a back spring as in a pocket knife ? Beautiful scales on that. I hope manah, Martin or Neil can shed some light on the origin. On second thought Regent St would indicate Great Britain. :thinking:

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Other than the owner's name (Tellier) this is the only identifiable mark on the razor. 146 Regent St., which turns out to be more helpful than you might think but not as helpful as I'd really like... More on that in a moment, for now, let's get back to that strange blade.


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It locks open like a knife, with a neat little 'click'.

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Unlike a knife, you can push it a little further and it swings free again until it locks in this position. The shaving position.

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This is all accomplished by detentes filed into the barrel-shaped tang.

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Down inside the scales there is a piece of spring-steel that locks the blade in the three positions. It just takes a little effort to move the blade and then it very smoothly rotates.

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The blade itself is swaged down the middle. I've seen a few razors like this, but they cover a span of time and don't really help figure out when this was made.

Now then, that address. 146 Regent Street...

Attachment 114191

For quite a long time the company that operated there was Rowlands & Frazer, a gold & silversmith. The partnership for that firm was changed around a few times, but they seem to have been in operation between the late 1830's and 1915 or so. During the 1830's the site housed an academy of some sort and int he 1820's it was another goldsmith, Kensington Lewis.

I can pretty easily believe this razor was made by either of the two goldsmiths.

(Thank you Neil for the dates of occupation and finding Kensington Lewis!)

Things get extra fun though when I start to speculate on the name Tellier.

In the 1820's there was a French wigmaker of that name who owned a patent for a method of punching hair into caps. He got into some litigation with a London maker, won his case and then came to London to study for a while.

Another option is Charles Tellier

Quote:

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THE TELLIER REFRIGERATING MACHINE Is the invention of Monsieur Charles Tellier of Paris France a practical machinist of great experience and inventive genius. It has been patented in England the whole of Europe and in the United States. It is in actual operation in these countries and also in the Argentine Republic has been fully and publicly tested and found to answer all the purposes to which it is applicable and has produced the results claimed for it by its inventor and patentee Fresh beef mutton and game have been conveyed from London to Rio in the steamer "Rio de Janeiro", expressly fitted out for the purpose with the Tellier Refrigerating Machine, and, after a voyage of twenty one days were found to be in perfect condition. During said trip and while on the equator and in its vicinity the temperature in the refrigerating room was kept at from 32 to 33 (Fahrenheit,) while outside it ranged from 105 to 107, and the water itself stood at 80 to 90 degrees

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Unfortunately when he carted a load of beef from Argentina back to Paris, the Parisian meat-venders had the shipment condemned. He continued on the London where he sold the meat to much rejoicing, and not long after, sold his patent as well.

Charles Tellier starved to death on the streets of Paris, even as some of his friends gathered money to help him out.

I choose to believe that when he sold that meat in London he got himself this razor from Rowlands & Frazer and used it all his days (hence the hone wear).

Of course that's probably a load of (refrigerated) bull...

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Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Appears to be a French razor with a back spring as in a pocket knife ? Beautiful scales on that. I hope manah, Martin or Neil can shed some light on the origin. On second thought Regent St would indicate Great Britain. :thinking:

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You didn't give me a chance to finish. :D

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?
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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

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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

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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.

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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?
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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!

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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...

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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:

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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.

[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...

Attachment 114661

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!

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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

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Careful, Neil! Remember the still fire? :rofl2:

Tom

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Originally Posted by sharptonn

Careful, Neil! Remember the still fire? :rofl2:

Tom

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

Regards,
Neil

Quote:

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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...

Attachment 114661

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!

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

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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.

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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!