Thread: What's the deal with these Damascus blades??

My razor arrived today. All I have done is unwrap her and look her over. Here are my initial impressions:

Packaging was not great. The razor came in a plastic wrapping inside a leather case which was also inside a plastic wrapping. This was in the shipping box. No additional padding. Though, IMO, the razor is perfectly safe like this, the leather case was free to move about the box. Peanuts? Bubble wrap?

I have nothing really to say about the leather case. It's orange on the outside, black inside, and it feels like leather. Pretty standard, IMO.

The razor came with a thin coat of oil or some such, so that's nice. The blade is 13/16... ish. There is a bit of a frown to the blade - wider at the toe, tapers a bit just past halfway to the heal, and then widens up just a touch at the heal. The spine is 3/16 thick - so I'm sure someone could figure out the bevel angle and determine if that's acceptable or not. (It sounds about right to me... the massive W&B's had 1/4 inch spines and were around 8/8, so this should be reasonable I think. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.) Filework on the spine feels smoothly done, so I don't anticipate any issues when stropping. The grind is that "truncated shoulderless" look, and the cutting edge is about 2.5 inches.

Scales feel like a natural material to me, but I'm not sure what. There are some pits in the front scale, and one larger "groove." The scales are straight and their thickness is reasonable, IMO. I can't tell what the "pins" are, but they do not look like normal pins. The razor is loose in the scales - there is no wiggle, but also no snugness. The only place things get more snug is around 180 degrees, when the tang is between the scales. As far as I can tell, this is because the razor does not taper along the tang/pivot/early tail.

Here are initial pictures before honing. Right out of the box.