Thread: Picked up two razors, need some help IDing one.

I made a trip up to Thomasville Georgia and managed to take home two razors. I found this George Wostenholm with a pretty intact box, so I couldn't pass up on that. There is some active rust but it doesn't look too bad. I'll do some sanding here and there and make some scales at some point.




The one that is a puzzle to me is below. There is a bear stamp with the words "OUR BEST" before it. On the reverse side, OTT Bros & co is stamped on there. As a final touch, the scales have the Boker tree. I googled the bear stamp and came up with T Hessen-Bruch, but the other pieces on the razor don't really line up with everything else. The two ideas I had were that a) it's a knock off, or b) someone put on Boker scales some years ago. Any thoughts?

Interesting notch in the scale at the pivot. Maybe someone did replace the scales.

Originally Posted by DOGRAH

Interesting notch in the scale at the pivot. Maybe someone did replace the scales.

Yea, my thoughts exactly.

Bob

I was curious about that as well. The pins and scales do have a considerable amount of wear on them however. If the scales were replaced, it wasn't anytime recently.

That still leaves the matter of "Our best [bear]". From what I understand, T Hessen-Bruch placed the bear in funny places, such as "Will [bear] inspection. It could certainly make sense that this is a T Hessen-Bruch razor. The OTT Bros stamp on the back though still leaves me with questions. There was one other member on the forum that had an OTT Bros razor, but there weren't any details available, it was just a roll call for razor makers basically.

I'm still open for ideas. I'll most likely post asking for an ID in the razor section as well to get some more exposure.