Thread: Restoring a blade while preserving etching

I agree with you all that the razor will never look new. Nor do I want it to. I like the nostalgic look. It's mind blowing to try and imagine all the places the razor has been in its 100 plus years of existence.
As for the suggestion that there was an "N" worn away over time so that the etching on the tang read "Non XLL" read as "non excell" is intriguing. Perhaps the blade makers philosophy is showing through....I like the idea of that!

there you go

Thanks for the great picture! I googled "Non XLL" and its meaning and found a few references to this post on another cite. Perhaps everyone else has seen this but since I am new to razors and just discovered this and I thought I would copy and paste. Very fascinating history! How interesting to see personalities and competition and a little philosophy survive time. Thanks for the picture OSDSET!


NON*XLL means None Excel. It was the trademark of Joseph Allen, Sheffield.
He was a competition with Wostenholm who used I*XL as a trademark and
was a much larger operation selling more knives. If the knife does not have
England on it, it was likely made prior to 1891. If it has England than after
1891 until Allen went out of business in 1947. Most of his knives were of
the smaller bowie style hunters since he didn't start in business until 1886,
well after the hayday of the bowie knife.

Rich
joseph allen & sons