F.W. Soderen frameback

[taffy]

I bought 4 boxed vintage starights yesterday at a antique store and 1 of them was the above razor, what is the reason for a frameback?

 

[gaj90027]

Just quoting (from my poor memory) what I heard on Lynn's Straight Razor DVD. Some of the original framebacks used to have a screw near the tip so you could loosen the frame and replace the very thin blade. Not sure why some of the framebacks were made this way and some were not but I'm sure someone a lot more knowledgeable will come along and straighten this out

 

[thanks]

Just as a guess, there was a vintage straight razor book going around on the forums, and in one section they explained that a full hollow ground razor was superior and sharper to wedgier grinds. I'm not sure if this was popular opinion or not, but if it was it would help explain the invention of framebacks. I would also be interested to hear from someone knowledgeable on the subject.

 

[danjared]

The Bessemer process for producing steel from iron (steel is a class of iron/carbon alloys) was not invented until the 1850s. I imagine that even for several years after that, most people were not able to use the process, meaning that they still used the older cementation process. This older process took several days, required much involvement and resources, and could not produce large pieces of steel. As a result, I imagine that framebacks were originally made because you just needed a smaller, high quality piece of steel for the blade. You could make the rest (spine and tang) out of lower grade steel (or really whatever, I guess). This likely made framebacks more affordable to make consistently.

It probably also has to do with the fact that a frameback can easily be made to have a thin "grind" without actually grinding, as thanks mentioned. Based on the fact that hollow grinds took a while to come about, my understanding is that this was also a technological problem. I do not know enough to say why grinding hollow razors is difficult, though.