Thread: Wolf(something), in gorgeous pressed horn scales.

"Look there," I said to myself. "A WOLF stamped Shepherd razor in the nicest pressed horn scales I've seen! MUST HAVE."

"Self," I replied. "The scale collectors are going to be on that thing like ants on apples. Ants with fists of cash. Ants that do nothing but buy scales like this and put them in a case somewhere!"

"Oh yeah, well, I want it more. SO THERE."

As it turned out I did want it more, but that required an awful lot of wanting.

I'd made two assumptions when I bought this and they both turned out to be wrong. The first was that it is in fact a Shepherd razor. Weeeell, doesn't look so much like that now. Shepherd's 'WOLF' razors always had a crown above the 'WOLF'. There's no sign of a crown on this and the WOLF (or WOLP) is very definitely part of a longer name or word.

As near as I can tell the stamp is WOL(F/P)??MAN. You'd think that would be enough to figure out it, but I can't so far.

The second assumption I'd made was that it probably dated to 1810 or so.

Ehhh. Not so much. Probably more like 1800. Or 1790.



The tail is paper thin. That coupled with the cryptic stamp leads me to believe it's earlier rather than later.

My Thomas Scargill has a tail nearly as thin, and my oldest Rhodes & Champion too. The nearest match, however, is a 1790's Cadman BENGAL stamped razor.

I've dug through directories and the list of apprentices in the Culters' Company of Hallamshire and found no name matches for this, which suggests two possibilities. It's a trademark stamp (like OBTAIN, NA KIN, AMTICTS, REMUS...) or it's a family name but not from Sheffield.

In any event, the seller, knowing that the primary audience for it would be scale collectors, helpfully suggested that this would be a great candidate for blade replacement. And yeah. The blade is pretty rusty (though it's not quite as bad as it appears). I don't think it had been opened all the way since it was made. You can't open it completely now.

THERE IS NO WAY ON EARLY I'M REPLACING THIS BLADE.

I WILL SHAVE WITH IT. THIS BLADE.

Mark my words!

Also, any thoughts on what the hell the stamp says would be much appreciated.

Another wonderful find! Blade replacement? that aint no feathers!

I am liking the old blades myself. This one is a nice find ! If I do get serious about collecting someday these are what I will be looking for also. Made more by hand than any other blade is what I like about them.

So, it's for shaving wolfs... I believe there was a razor here on the forum that was for shaving cats before.
Clean it carefully!

I was looking at the stamp some more and realized that the distortion was pretty uniform. So I took a better picture (of the cleaned stamp) and corrected for the distortion.



Definitely helps. The first four letters are WOLF.

So is it WOLFROMAN or WOLFBOMAN?

WOLFHUMAN - that, my friend, is a werewolf blade!

Sorry... couldn't resist. I have no idea what that actually says, but I am very happy to hear you intend to bring it back into use - good luck!

To be honest, the more I look at it the more I think it could be WOLPH**AN

Mind you that last letter could be an M rather than an N

?? ??

Manah to the white courtesy phone, please! If anyone would know, it'll be him.

Edit: A google search shows "wolfram" as "tungsten." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram

I'd go for a misspelled "Wolfhuman", the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about werewolfs are not that they are particular good at spelling!

Originally Posted by Lemur

I'd go for a misspelled "Wolfhuman", the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about werewolfs are not that they are particular good at spelling!

Or, apparently, carving swans... The swan on it looks like a dodo-swan-flamingo hybrid!