okay. so they have razors. some are shoulderless, some have shoulders, some have stabilizers, some have both? how many different configurations are there? and what makes a grind a rattler?
When the term was coined "Rattler" was a style of grind .. We usually refer to them as a Faux Framebacks now, it is a longitudinal grind, after the double hollow grinder was invented in 1906 you saw many hollow grind razors adopt the name "Rattler" which made it more about the sound it made when shaving. So over time the meaning changed I knew I had a pic of one someplace, Top razor is the original style of a "Rattler" Wanna see a really cool one these were called a Saber Grind
Around the turn of the century (1900), Wade & Butcher's catalog featured some 120,000+ different razors. To add to Glen's comment above, the rattler occupies a special niche among straight razors. It took a very high degree of skill to grind a 'rattler' razor, and the failure rate during the grinding was fairly high, which made the razors both uncommon and expensive. They were a very thin wedge grind, with quite noisy feedback during shaving owing to their thinness, compared to other razors of the time. They remained the keenest and thinnest of straight razors until the rise of the hollow grinding machines. The frameback razor, with it's semi-disposable replaceable blade, was the spiritual successor to the rattler, and the ancestor of the shavettes. I would even go so far as to say that a true rattler razor represents the pinnacle of the wedge grinder's art, as some wafer thin extra hollow ground razors would represent the pinnacle of the hollow grinder's art some 60 years later.
This is my understanding They were done as a "Showing off" grind, I have pics of one that actually has two channels ground into it Some were done front and back like the one I posted,, some only on the front They were some of the hardest grinds to do, as @PLANofMAN mentioned but to create the grind with multiple hollows ground out was even harder I doubt I have had more than 20 cross my hones in all these years
lol, it's amazing what we discover by accident? I just ran into one and fell in love with it right off the bat not knowing there was anything different about it. I would love to know how you all find this stuff out because I have looked and looked which is how I found the forum lol. thank you guys
