The Colin Davis Collection comprises a pair of blade shears, a sharpening stone and a hand-made wool-depth gauge. Mr Davis was employed to shear the stud show rams on Merryville Merino Stud at Murrumbateman for fifty years from the late 1940s. Over the years, Mr Davis also gave blade-shearing demonstrations for many organisations including in 1989 for the National Museum of Australia. This set of shears is one of those he used in his work.
The fine-wool production sector is a particularly important element of the wool-growing industry as a whole. Quality stud rams are one of the key elemenbts in developing a fine-wool flock. Great care is taken with shearing stud rams and this is performed only the best shearers using hand shears. Colin Davis performed this work on Merryville, one of Australia's leading fine-wool producers for almost fifty years. The hand-shears are also representative of that era of wool-growing before mechanical shears were commonly adopted in the late 19th century.
