Quote Originally Posted by Aggelos View Post
The one you absolutely mustn't touch without a lot of practice is the white one, still from the first picture.
I'd love to have a closeup of this one, because I suspect it's the true treasure of the lot.

That aside, I can confirm, a lot of them are French, made in Thiers late 1800s.
OK, so really really don't screw up that one.

The orange one, while the scales are pretty, does seem to be the cheapest of the bunch. It just had that "not so quality" feel to it. My main concern is the unpinning. I think I've successfully unpinned four out of ten without significant damage to the scales and only the without any damage to the scales. So, I think one of the first ones will be the one that doesn't open. My pinning is also weak, but that just makes it ugly and doesn't really damage it.

I'm just trying to understand better. The thing that had led me to think early 1800s is that most are wedges. I read that hollow ground started around 1850. Did it take a while for hollow grinding to be adopted? I also think the French shape threw me when trying to match style with age photos. I have not read much about French razors, so I need to do that.

I'm currently working on honing smiles. I have some funky shaped ones in my first batch that I think were caused by bad honing. Hopefully those will get me some experience on figuring out what needs to be done and how to do it.

I have taken close up pictures for you, but I will need to get back to the computer to send them.

Thanks for your help.