Thread: is there duty on a razor from china

Whoops. Looks like they the used stainmore.
Heat treating increases inter granular corrosion in T 430- I noticed it's at the honed areas. Also what is plain water?
Not saying that I believe them for one second when they laser etch an alloy name into the side- it doesn't make it that alloy.

Originally Posted by jnats

Whoops. Looks like they the used stainmore.
Heat treating increases inter granular corrosion in T 430- I noticed it's at the honed areas. Also what is plain water?
Not saying that I believe them for one second when they laser etch an alloy name into the side- it doesn't make it that alloy.

Filtered tap water.

Cheers, Steve

Originally Posted by Steve56

Both my Gold Dollar 800 and the ZY-430 will rust within 1 hour with plain water on them. I did this and this is not the definition of stainless to me. Try it yourself and see. The attached image shows a 60-90 minute exposure to plain water drops.

Cheers, Steve

My Gold Dollar is a 208. Different steel. You'll have to argue the definition of stainless with the manufacturer. I assume the manufacturer knows the difference, since the 208 is advertised as carbon and the 600/800 are marketed as stainless.

Then again, it is China and they could well be using the same steel in all of them and labeling it different because who's actually gonna check on a sub $30 razor? I wouldn't have even thought to leave water on it to test the metal.

There is definitely a difference between the stainless gd 66 and gd 208. Having worked on both the gd 208 is much softer then the 66. Which is what you would expect for carbon steel vs stainless steel.

As to leaving water on the blade to test it tells you nothing if you don't have much more data then just two blades you don't think are stainless. You need a much larger sample with all different grades of stainless to have that test mean something. Different grades will be more stain resistant then others.

I have stainless steel pocket knives from reputable companies that I have used in the rain for less time then an hr that have had rust spots when I went to dry them. Then you have things like dinnerware that get left wet all the time with no problem.

Wait a tic...carbon is supposed to be harder than stainless isn't it? Either everything I've learned about steel is a lie, or GD's carbon steel is really bad if it's softer than stainless.

Originally Posted by Castel33

I have stainless steel pocket knives from reputable companies that I have used in the rain for less time then an hr that have had rust spots when I went to dry them. Then you have things like dinnerware that get left wet all the time with no problem.

This is correct. The biggest difference is that's 18/8 like T 304, which is resistive to most dilute acids. T-430 is not resilient against any less than 100% pur sulphuric acid. Knoxville used to be a leading us miner of coal, and they have a fly ash problem. Sulfur gets into water and it binds with CO2 to form H2SO4 or sulphuric acid. Municipalities will do what they can and pH correct, but chlorine has a high pH, your brita strips that- you're left with acidic water. What filtration are you using? If it doesn't pH correct- there's another big difference. Again- the corrosion is concentrated at the honed areas- attempting to heat treat T430 leads to accelerated inter granular corrosion.

What color are the spark when you grind one to a nub on a belt grinder?

Actually TVA solved the sulphur issue 10-15 years ago when scrubbers were installed at all the coal plants. But before that you're right, they had a severe problem. I worked at ORNL for 33+ years, and once the Kingston plant flyashed the parking lot and ate the paint off several hundred cars which TVA had to repaint. You could see flyash on your car. They actually installed a carwash at the Bull Run plant for Oak Ridge workers, all you had to do was show your badge for a free car wash anytime you wanted. But again, that was over a decade ago.

You could tell the difference in the Smoky mountains when they installed the scrubbers, many times you could not do color photography because the sky was yellow. Once a fellow photog told me he loved those peach and purples in the sunset, and I told him it was supposed to be orange and magenta, but everything was skewed yellow.

But anyway, I did nuclear and materials technolgy and am familiar with many materials. While folks are eager to instruct me about my erroneous assumptions, I'd much rather hear about your own experiments with the GD 800 and ZY-430.

Cheers, Steve

Well, my ZY arrived today and it looks like I lucked a good one. It wasn't shave ready by a long chalk but the bevel was even and the hone marks on the spine were not too bad either. A marker test on a hone after taping the spine revealed pretty good contact except for one small area near the toe on the brand side of the blade. The spine width was 5.96 mm +or- 0.01 mm along its length and the included angle of the edge was 16.3 degrees. This suggests that the grinder knew what he was doing and the object of the exercise was to make a razor rather than an RSO

Feeling that a full bevel set was justified I took it to the Shapton GS 1000 and the Norton 4k/8k, with some finishing strokes across the Shapton Pro 12000. I then stropped on canvas and leather with the result that the well known hair test that nobody likes much passed just fine. Shave test to come on Saturday.

The fit and finish of the razor is roughly Gold Dollar standard but the shoulderless design means no problems at the heel. I can't give an opinion on the metallurgy of the blade - I've oiled mine as I want to shave with it first before checking for rust development.

Got mine in yesterday. The scales were not the ones pictured and the thing weighs a ton. BUT it is 1000 times better then Gold Dollar. I have made a Gold Dollar shave ready and by the time I was done, I had completely waisted a 240 grit stone and it didn't even look like a razor anymore. The ZY was at least true hollow grind so I could at least make it into shave ready without any more work than any other razor. I also had a Thiers Issard in for sharpening that had be VERY neglected and rust spots, but no chipping. Took me about the same amount of time to get the ZY shave ready as that one. So all in all for the $8 I paid for it I'd call it plausible to buy, as long as you don't mind honing it or having someone hone it. It was NOT shave ready when received. I will continue to use it for a while and see how it holds up. I got the 430 "no stain" by the way so we will see.

Ok guys it's now April 23 and I started this on Feb. 23. So 2 months later I have had NO issues with the razor. It is on the softer side, so you don't have to strop it but 10 times on each side to get it back to shaving smooth. BUT you do want to strop it every time you use it for a good shave. Overall for $8 this is actually amazing for the money. If you are willing to re-hone the razor or willing to pay me or someone else $20 on top of the $8 to re-hone the razor then it is definitely good to go. That being said there are some nice vintage razors in the 28 to 30 dollar range that are truly shave ready on e-bay if you find the right seller. NOTE many vintage straight razors say "Shave Ready" on e-bay and are no where near close. Overall I am happy with my purchase, but I just got two more vintage razors in and I want to move on from this one. 2 months of using only this razor is more than enough time to test it out and it actually passes. It's still junk compared to $100 razors, but it is a straight razor that can shave well with a little bit of work.