hobson & son

**Tanamack** · 03-20-2008, 04:53 PM

Hi, has anyone ever heard of M. HOBSON & SON.WARRANTED I picked up a straight razor as kind of a bonus when I bought a scuttle off a lady in the next town. She said the handle might be bone ????

**professorchaos** · 03-21-2008, 12:22 PM

Appears to that it could be bone. Blade seems to be a wedge and looks like it will clean up pretty well.

**R-James** · 03-21-2008, 12:38 PM

They do look like bone scales, but I am certainly no expert. Nice find!

**DeadRinger** · 03-21-2008, 07:28 PM

that straight razor looks awesome, its sheffield steel from england, in a wedge grind, looks to be 5-6/8.. definitely a nice find, if you decide to part with it, please pm me, ive been lloking for a wedge for quite some time in that style. and those scales do look to be bone as well. Cheers

**Suzuki** · 03-21-2008, 07:36 PM

Originally Posted by professorchaos

Appears to that it could be bone. Blade seems to be a wedge and looks like it will clean up pretty well.

+1 on both the bone scales and that it should clean up real nice.

**Tanamack** · 03-22-2008, 08:35 AM

This is why I can't have nice things. I soaked this in soapy water to try to clean it up a bit and when I took it out of the water the handle was cracked.
I'm thinking someone might have glued it together at some point and the warm water made the glue let go. There is a crack at the other end but it didn't come apart. So tell me......is it still worth something, is a wedge different to shave with than a hollow ground?

**jlander** · 03-22-2008, 08:42 AM

Man that sucks BIG rocks! Sorry to see that.

A warranted blade is probably Sheffield steel and that's definitely worth keeping. If it is, you can remove the scales and clean up the blade then make new scales for it. Or you can contact a restorer and get it done. That could cost anywhere from $50 up depending on what kind of scales you want but could make a real beauty out of that blade.

Check the tang (the area between the blade and the scales) and see if it says Sheffield or Solingen. If it does, I would try to save the blade.

My $0.02.

**Suzuki** · 03-22-2008, 08:47 AM

A Sheffield wedge (and I'm pretty sure that's what you've got here) is definitely worth restoring/rescaling - still a decent find - especially for free!

I've purchased nice Sheffield wedge blades for under $10 and then spent another $70 to regrind and rescale - and consider myself lucky to have got a bargain on a great razor. If you don't want to spend this much money, you can polish up the blade yourself with some metal polish (I would go by hand unless you're good with a dremmel), see if you can get a cheap set of scales and then hone it up. But this depends on your skill set.

Wedges are quite different to shave with (same technique obviously), as they are quite stiff/heavy relative to the same sized razor in a hollow grind.

I really like my wedges/heavier grinds, as they work better for me on my dense, coarse beard.

They also have a different sort of feedback - a really sharp wedge makes almost no sounds as it slices through the beard.