Finnish Skew

[pommyphil]

Greetings This blade arrived unhandled, cleaned,sharpened and handled, it cuts well.

My friend Google was no help,other than Helsingfors is the old name for Helsinki.

It's 35mm wide 5 to 6mm thick stamped "cast steel" on one side and

"Engelska Magasinet Helsingfors" on the other. Anyone know anything ?

Cheers Phil

[thomaslaursen]

Hi Pommyphil

Well. I can't really tell you anything about it's story. But I knew a girl from Finland once, and she told me that a minority spoke swedish as a second language. The text is swedish, and "ENGELSKA MAGASINET" means something like "the english warehouse/hardware store". I think it could be anything from a big place to a small shop. Who knows?
It looks very interesting. Where did you get it from?

Thomas

[thomaslaursen]

Ok, I got curious about this, and I just had an extra hour to kill, so I did a little research. I came up with a book published in 1879 (http://translate.google.dk/translate?hl=da&sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.genealogia.fi%2Fhakem%2Fkalenterit%2Fos1879er.htm) and it gave me an adress, and a search on that landed me on this lawfirm (http://www.castren.fi/en-GB/ourstory/) founded in 1888. There is a picture of their first office. Look at the sign on the left side of the corner. It's hard to see what it say, but when you know what you are looking for, it sort of looks like it says "engelska magasinet" doesn't it?

[pommyphil]

Well done Thomas, good research :2tsup:. I held of replying for a couple of days expecting a flood of chiseling lawyer jokes :D

Good to see Finnish lawyers doing something useful when underemployed, ours
in Australia tend to go into politics:((

The skew was a couple of AU$ on ebay, only carbon steel so I keep it honed
for finish planing. :B Thanks again Phil.

[KimFinland]

>>It's 35mm wide 5 to 6mm thick stamped "cast steel" on one side and "Engelska Magasinet Helsingfors" on the other. Anyone know anything ?<<

Engelska Magasinet would has ceased to exist a long time ago, and so has the wooden building, unfortunately enough. I've got no exact records but a qualified guess is that The warehouse in question imported English goods of various kind, and therefore I'd assume that the tools you got aren't manufactured in Finland. It's impossible to even guess their origin, but England or anywhere in the UK would be probable.

As far as Helsingfors and Swedish goes, the capital of our country is still called Helsingfors if you speak Swedish as 300 000 of us Finns do. The fact that the label is in Swedish on one side and English on the other tells us that the tools were probably imported during the time when Swedish was the trade and official language. Had it been imported later, the text would have appeared in Finnish and possibly also Swedish. So, where ever it comes from it's probably sold in the late 19th century or possibly early 20th century.

[pommyphil]

Great stuff :2tsup: Thanks Phil

[rsser]

Cast steel acc to the fluff in the brain box was a selling point in the 19th century.

Nice handle you've put on it.

Should be good for low to medium density woods.