Thread: Stanley 151R ?

Not rare at all; still available new!

Just a moment...

Finicky to use though.

Originally Posted by old workshop

I asked if he would take £ 8.00 for the two but he said he would be happier with £ 1.00.

Yeah, I'd go back to that seller in future, if he bargains that way - a counteroffer from your five pound proposal to one pound...if you'd kept bargaining, he might have ended up giving you money to take them!

No I meant £ 10.00


Martin

I kind of suspected you did, but I can never resist a straight line.

By the way, the 151R Stanleys are pretty well unknown here in the U.S. A good find on your part.

Originally Posted by Bill Houghton

....... By the way, the 151R Stanleys are pretty well unknown here in the U.S. A good find on your part.

Bill, do you mean that round-bottomed Stanley shaves are rare, or shaves marked as "151R"?

The rounded shave I have is a Record (picked up in Canada), it is simply marked "A151". If you look up the current Record shaves, they talk about 'A151" & 'A151/R' but mine is not marked with anything to distinguish it from the flat-bottomed version. My first thought is that both companies simply used body castings for the regular shave and rounded them, but taking a close look at my pair, the flat-bottomed version doesn't have enough bulk in the lower section to form a rounded bottom, so presumably, they needed a different casting. Which makes me wonder why there's nothing on the RB version to distinguish the casting?

As the Chief sez, the RB is not the most intuitive tool to use when you first pick it up. I couldn't get along with mine at all, at first. I'd been using flat-bottomed shaves for years & generally pulled them but it's hard to pull a RB version & rotate evenly so it keeps cutting. One day I discovered that by putting the tips of my thumbs on those two little flats/indents either side of the throat & pushing instead of pulling, I was suddenly able to rotate it controllably and get continuous, clean shavings. We get along just fine now.

While I use my flat-bottomed shave fairly frequently, the RB version sees very little use - about once every two years it is needed for some job or other, but if someone snuck into my shed & stole it, it wold likely be a long time before I noticed! I suspect there are a few RB shaves out there that don't get a lot of use....

Cheers,

Like you say Ian it does not get a lot of use but is there for the times a flat bottomed wont fit the tighter inside curves. I was many years with just a flat one but found the need for the round one to make up the set.
Regards
John

Originally Posted by IanW

Bill, do you mean that round-bottomed Stanley shaves are rare, or shaves marked as "151R"?

151rs are uncommon here. Round shaves definitely aren't. Three months of ebay sale history only shows sales of the 151r in England or the AU with the exception of one or two sold in the US that were made in England.

Yes, D.W.'s reported experience is consistent with mine. The round-bottomed Stanley shaves I see - not common, but there are plenty on That Auction Site, are the smaller No. 63. I've seen No. 63s in the wild a couple of times (only the first one followed me home...I do have some self-control), and I've seen, and purchased one No. 63X. The 63X is an interesting little shave: it's generally described as being for "manual training class," or what I was raised to call "shop class," but my example has the tightest mouth of any shave I've purchased, which seems odd for something intended for kids to beat the snot out of.

Hi,

The 51R I purchased has no ID mark to say it
a 51R at all. It just says Made in Eng but on the
flat one I bought It had room for No 151 above
the flat sole. The flat one was made in the USA.

Martin.