Two old warriors united again (John C. Cockhill military scaled x 2)

[honed]

I've had a John C. Cockhill wedge for some time, it's one of my absolute best shavers & it has a interesting history.
In short it was an old blade, collected by the armed forces & rescaled by the military & sent to the WW1 troops for service.
I wrote a bit more about it here.
It's unrestored & has a beautiful patina and nicely worn scales.
I like it a lot!

A while ago I managed to find another one on British eBay.
Unfortunately it had some chips in the blade & a bit of old rust pits & general tarnish.
Not very nice to look at, the tang was also a bit rusted.
Scales were really dirty & sad.
So I decided to do a thorough restore on both blade & scales.

So now I have one in original condition & one shiny, restored one!
Blade is handsanded from 240 up to 1200 then Micromesh pads up to 12.000
Finished with cerium oxide on felt-pad.

Scales were cleaned with 0000 steel wool dipped in autosol, scrubbed with soap & water & hand buffed with beeswax & cheesecloth.

They look really nice together & since I'm a history/antique nerd I really like to ponder the action these two old warriors have seen!

I've checked with some folks on a forum for old British Army history & it seems like the letters & numbers stand for some type of identification.
So if they are right, the "patina" one was in the Infantry (according to one guy the numbers indicate that it was in the trenches in France)
& the "restored one in the Navy. One thought that the "1898" indicates the year & combined with the number it would place it in the Boer War.

In any case, they can relax now, just hang around the den & enjoy some Cella every now & then!


Before:

Together again!

 

[Drybonz]

Great stuff, man... thanks for sharing.

 

[Luc]

Very cool!

 

[professorchaos]

Awesome! Thank you!

 

[DogHair]

Excellent work! I love the history.

Do you think this razor was also an Britich Army re-issue? The engraving on the scales looks a little different. The blade is Hunter & Son, Talbot Works, Sheffield.

 

[Joe Edson]

Great Work Jens! Thanks for sharing

 

[honed]

Excellent work! I love the history.

Do you think this razor was also an Britich Army re-issue? The engraving on the scales looks a little different. The blade is Hunter & Son, Talbot Works, Sheffield.

It looks a bit different, but given that it is a Sheffield blade & obviously old enough it might just be.
Look for a little "sign" on the scales.
It's just a few mm big (small) looks like a little stamp. None of my pictures shows it, but it is allegedly the official "Military goods" stamp.
I don't really know how to describe it, but it looks like a small stamping.

And even if it isn't there, it could have been worn off.
But check & see if you spot anything, if so, you can be 100% sure that it is old army.
None of mine has a good fit in the scales.
Especially the "new" one only has maybe 1/3 of the blade inside the scales when closed.
And from your pic your razor looks about the same.
And I don't think any maker would have put out a razor originally with such bad fitting scales.

 

[honed]

Here is a pic vaguely showing what I tried to explain above:

 

[Munxcub]

It's standard practice (in the Canadian Military) to mark your kit with your last name and last 3 to identify it as yours. My guess would be that this is a similar practice you see here, doesn't look like initials or last names, but could either be their entire service number (would have been shorter in WWI) 31F780 feels like that. The others are maybe what battalion/regiment/etc it belonged to?

 

[honed]

It's standard practice (in the Canadian Military) to mark your kit with your last name and last 3 to identify it as yours. My guess would be that this is a similar practice you see here, doesn't look like initials or last names, but could either be their entire service number (would have been shorter in WWI) 31F780 feels like that. The others are maybe what battalion it belonged to?

That is entirely possible.
The explanation I got from a British history buff was that it stands for 3rd Infantry (it's an I) unit/platoon/whatever 780

 

[Munxcub]

That could be , I won't argue with a history buff. The 5BG-2-15 sounds to me like a unit. 5BG I want to read as 5 Brigade, what the 2-15 would be I don't know. 5 Brigade, 2nd regiment, 15 platoon? I never did get my head wrapped around that stuff during my very brief stint in the reserves.

 

[pz93c]

Well, BG could be Battle Group or Broad Gauge (railway).

I can't tell if his photo says 5th or 15th BG.

 

[Sando]

Those razors are just all kinds of cool and even more so with the history. I'm glad you were able to save them from obscurity.

...Ray

 

[DogHair]

It looks a bit different, but given that it is a Sheffield blade & obviously old enough it might just be.
Look for a little "sign" on the scales.
It's just a few mm big (small) looks like a little stamp. None of my pictures shows it, but it is allegedly the official "Military goods" stamp.
I don't really know how to describe it, but it looks like a small stamping.

And even if it isn't there, it could have been worn off.
But check & see if you spot anything, if so, you can be 100% sure that it is old army.
None of mine has a good fit in the scales.
Especially the "new" one only has maybe 1/3 of the blade inside the scales when closed.
And from your pic your razor looks about the same.
And I don't think any maker would have put out a razor originally with such bad fitting scales.

No small stamp that I can find. The engraving says 5BG-2-15 with a faint box around the lettering.