Nichols Bros 12" Slicer Shear Steel 1880s-1920s

Offset slicer made by the great Nichols Bros of Greenfield Mass. with hand forged shear steel blade and steel pinned ebony handle.

Shear steel was the top quality steel for blade making in the 19th century with greater purity and more carbon than mass produced Bessemer process steel, it has a bitey feel and can take a very fine edge. 

Nichols Bros was formed in the 1880s in Greenfield Massachusetts the epicenter of the birth of American industrial knifemaking in the early 19th century by the J Russell Co. The father of the Nichols Bros immigrated from Sheffield England to work at the J Russell Green River Works in the 1840s and his sons started Nichols Bros. in the 1880s.