A new box of tetnus

So, I did a thing. I saw this "buy it now" box for about $10 per razor. I knew some of them looked really old, so I figured I would do those last after I get a few more learnings under my belt. But, once I got them in my hands I think they are all really old. I am obviously no expert, but by the shape I think most are 1800s. And, I think that most of them can have salvageable scales. Except the one that is so torn up I can't open it.

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I figure I will hit them all with some 3M polish to try to at least get the active rust off, oil them up, and maybe stash them away until I feel a bit more confident I am not going to screw up something valuable.

Not sure why, but the photos went to 20kb when I uploaded them, so I hope they show up.

Nice.!
A few look to be of French origin

Try cutting off the active rust with a SE razor blade, before the 3M

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Originally Posted by outback

Nice.!
A few look to be of French origin

Try cutting off the active rust with a SE razor blade, before the 3M

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I need to look up more about the shapes vs country, but I think I know which ones you mean.

Yeah, I will try the razor first and then 3M.

Hey, if you have any guidance on any that may not be a shame to ruin, I would appreciate it. I can repost pictures with numbers for identification.

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.

As for which one to start with, I'd advise the orange scaled one in the first picture. By far, IMHO the easiest to fully restore.
But use the second one from the top in the first picture to practice with at first, you might ruin it, but it's ok, there is not much to save anyway.

The one you can't open can still be a good surprise, judging by the scales...

Honing an old Thiers razor is not to be done by a beginner. Aside from the smile, which needs a bit of training, their quality varies a lot, and experience is needed to understand whether you did a shabby work, or worked with a shabby razor from the start.

Yeah I agree with Aggelos. That was the first one my eye went to. I'm not sure what you paid for that lot but the value of that one alone probably far outweighs it. Most are probably mid to late 1800s and one or two maybe early 1900s but that one he is referring to is probably 1700s - early early 1800s. If that one is in good shape you have truly found a treasure, a diamond amidst the rubble so to speak

My guess is they didn't know what they had. Man, where am I when these things show up? Speaking of which I hope someone here got that lot of 32 I think that had the Wade and Butcher FBU in it. probably didn't realize what he had in that either otherwise he would have sold that one by itself. It alone would have sold for more than what the whole lot sold for. I watched that lot like a hawk and wanted to bid on it but I figured it would go beyond what I was willing to pay and didn't want to drive the price up for someone who really was going to buy it.

Early 1800s is my guess, circa 1810/1820. The earlier makes were a bit different.
Looks a bit like what you'd find in a napoleonian officer travel kit.

That is a beautiful pile of entertainment.

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Originally Posted by RezDog

That is a beautiful pile of entertainment.

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That's one way to look at it, Rez! ;)

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Originally Posted by Aggelos

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.

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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.

Hey Paul, well that makes two of us that didn't really know what they had. I have bookmarked the seller. What really appealed to me was the buy it now on all the boxes. I think it was $100 and then $20 for shipping. But it may have been $100 shipped. I figure until I know better I'll look for batches at about $10 per razor. And apparently post it here so people can tell me what not to work on :).

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Originally Posted by RezDog

That is a beautiful pile of entertainment.

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That's how I see it. I figure, since I only have the one face, I'll keep one of two and hand the rest of them off. I'm not much of a collector.

Well the Germans started hollow grinding earliest, what with them inventing the technology around 1870 if memory serves.

I might be corrected on that but I think the English soon followed, even regrinding previous wedges.

Us froggies were slow on the uptake. Well that wasn't the first time in the cutlery world, you'd think we would learn...
So while some of the best Smiths around by the end of the 1800s could do some pretty hollow grinds on the "big wheel", it's only around 1910 that we really started to use the technology.

But overall I'd say you have blades covering the whole 19th century

Awesome, thanks.

This is from strazors.com. Here's the link.
STRAZORS.com - all about classic razors - Carl Friedrich ERN, Solingen-Wald.

1893 was the year the hexa machine was introduced but I think you're right Aggelos that someone was toying with that technology earlier than that. As I recall the 1840s was when hollow grinding first started to appear. Anyway it's a very interesting article.
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By the way, hexa translates as "witch" in English

Nice article. I do imagine the first step was hollow grinding by hand and then this guy made a machine to make it more precise and mass producable. But, a machine like that could have made hollow grinding more common.

So, I was off by 20-50 years.

I think you'll find that that is very close to the window of speculation with razors most of the time. Somewhere between 10 to 30 years.
By the way, remember that website. He's a member of SRP although I haven't seen him active for a while. Anyway, he has a lot of good information on razors. If you have a question about one that's a good place to start.

Aggelos et al, here are the photos you requested. There is some serious corrosion in the middle of the blade. So, I guess the jury is out on whether it will shave, but I think it may not go to the edge.

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Scrape that active rust off with a SE razor blade and then you will know more. Hopefully it is just a bubble on the surface. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I would proceed with caution though.

But, I am not supposed to touch that one :).

That is what was said, however I don’t think that was the spirit. Some preservation is required. I think you should do some small but simple thing. Scraping off the active rust, maybe a light hand polish, and a waxing, would be all you need for now. I think sometimes if you do nothing you are adding to the issue. I think the spirit of what was said was more like don’t do a full restore.

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Originally Posted by RezDog

That is what was said, however I don’t think that was the spirit. Some preservation is required. I think you should do some small but simple thing. Scraping off the active rust, maybe a light hand polish, and a waxing, would be all you need for now. I think sometimes if you do nothing you are adding to the issue. I think the spirit of what was said was more like don’t do a full restore.

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Oh, I totally get that. I was just playing around. Last thing I want to do is let them continue to deteriorate so I don't ruin them.

I will scrape with a razor, then use some 3M with a rag, and I was planning on using food grade mineral oil. But you mentioned wax, which is new to me. Is there a wax I should use rather than the mineral oil?

I use conservators wax from Lee Valley, many use renaissance or ren wax. I don’t always wax though, I often use VCI paper for stuff that I and storing, and VCI emitters in my displays.

Love the term "box of tetnus"

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Originally Posted by CamaroZ28

Love the term "box of tetnus"

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Gotta give credit to my girlfriend for that one.

All Razors are Hollow ground the term Wedge is very deceiving but just think about geometry, if the razor was actually a Wedge like many of those diagrams show you could never hone it :)

We all call heavy bladed old razors "Wedges" we just do, but when discussing grinds it is technically incorrect..
Some out there do look like a wedge because the spine has been worn away :( but really they do have some hollow

The "Witch" was/is used to produce Double Hollows and Full Hollows it was pretty much used all over by 1910

If you look at the first pic the Orange scaled is a Double hollow and the Black scaled on top row Left pointing down Those are probably post 1910

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Originally Posted by gssixgun

All Razors are Hollow ground the term Wedge is very deceiving but just think about geometry, if the razor was actually a Wedge like many of those diagrams show you could never hone it :)

We all call heavy bladed old razors "Wedges" we just do, but when discussing grinds it is technically incorrect..
Some out there do look like a wedge because the spine has been worn away :( but really they do have some hollow

The "Witch" was/is used to produce Double Hollows and Full Hollows it was pretty much used all over by 1910

If you look at the first pic the Orange scaled is a Double hollow and the Black scaled on top row Left pointing down Those are probably post 1910

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Picky Picky. Yeah, they all seem to have a bit of curvature when you look at them edge on. But I can't really feel it when I rub up the side. There are the two full hollows that you mentioned and then one other that has enough hollowed out to really feel. Then there is that one frame back or near frame back or whatever you call it.

Funny yall brought this back to life today. I am going to try to get started on some of these this weekend.

From the fuzzy pic it looks like a True Frameback if there is a screw at the front of the spine it might be a Replaceable Blade Style

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Originally Posted by gssixgun

From the fuzzy pic it looks like a True Frame back if there is a screw at the front of the spine it might be a Replaceable Blade Style

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I'll have to look again. I don't remember seeing a screw, but I don't remember what I had for dinner yesterday, either.

I got a mini bench top drill press this weekend. Since there was the one blade I could not open, I went ahead and removed those scales. The drill press worked like a dream. Not really much to restore on the blade side of things. Maybe make it into a nail file or something. To be fair, as soon as it popped open I remembered from the ebay listing that it was junk. Didn't stop me from having a good laugh at it, though.

Anyway, based on what I have seen yall do, I think I can fix the scales and use them on something else when I need to. If nothing else, it will be good practice. I know I have seen some threads I can look up on this.

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I think it is the wedge that makes one look bigger than the other in the photos.

IF the blade is still hollow enough, you could make one like this...
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But you need to really get lucky. I've shaved with this a few times. Its something that takes extra concentration to keep the angle proper and not slice your face open! As the angle is very hard to see. you have to watch the angle of the scales when shaving as the angle of the blade is had to see.
BTW, This is a 2/8 razor.

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Originally Posted by Gasman

IF the blade is still hollow enough, you could make one like this...
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But you need to really get lucky. I've shaved with this a few times. Its something that takes extra concentration to keep the angle proper and not slice your face open! As the angle is very hard to see. you have to watch the angle of the scales when shaving as the angle of the blade is had to see.
BTW, This is a 2/8 razor.

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With all due respect, some of yall are just nutty.

That said, I'll take it under advisement.

Nutty? You don't know the half of it. :rofl2:

The other half...

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Things broken, can be saved as well.

Looks Nice Outback. Mine are not really in bad shape. I guess they are bug bites, or maybe some sort of rot. And, like I said, I have seen some of yall repair scales in really bad shape. Just another new skill to learn.

What you dont know is Outback is Andre the Giants big brother and that razor is full sized. :rofl2:

My razor was an extreme hollow blade so i was able to do some serious sanding and cutting to make it thinner. Its all about what you think you can get away with and make it shave

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Originally Posted by Gasman

What you dont know is Outback is Andre the Giants big brother and that razor is full sized. :rofl2:

My razor was an extreme hollow blade so i was able to do some serious sanding and cutting to make it thinner. Its all about what you think you can get away with and make it shave

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OK, so taking it under advisement, as promised. Mine is a wedge. Maybe it was a near wedge, but pretty much just a wedge now. The problem I see is that there is no protection between the thumb and the blade. Yours still has a shoulder there to keep your thumb off the blade. I'd have to grind the snot out of the tang to get that. It'd be a lot of time with the wine cork.

But, I did your picture to my girlfriend, and she thinks I am nutty, so you can only imagine what she thinks of you now. But, I asked if she would want an 1850s bread lame and she said "Sure, why not". Granted, it may not be from the 1850s, but she knows less than I do. I could have said King Arthur used it and she'd have to go with it.