Thread: Non-singing straight

Hey SRP friends

Today I used one of the recent additions to my vintage straight razors collection and noticed that it's "singing" volume was extremely low, almost undetectable. Others in my collection have strong healthy singing voices. Question: are some styles/grinds louder singers than others?

Different grinds are different that way,
a wedge or near wedge is practically silent,
thus less feed back to the user and for that reason alone some people don't like them.

Yupper, the heavier the grind the more quiet the shave.

Bob

BINGO!!! interesting how our perception of a good shave is shaped by things other than the end result. halfway through the first pass, I thought..."what's with this, how could a freshly honed razor be giving such substandard performance?" Upon completion the shave was found to be nick free and BBS, however the lack of the blades "musical performance" caused me to assume the quality was sure to be a yawner. Different grinds!!! yep....still learning.

My first great shave was with a wedge,
and my thoughts followed the same thought line as yours.

The more wedge-like grinds I acquire the more I tend to favor them. I still love my hollow grinds, but I like that smooth as butter feeling that the wedges give. I feel a lot more "feedback" I guess you could call it with more of the hollow grinds.

You have to spray some throat treatment on the blade and it will sing louder for you. Maybe it has a cold.

All razors of the singing type are a bit different. It's dependent on the geometry of the blade and the metal it's made of and the grind too.

With the near wedge and wedge grind you have to listen very carefully to hear it 'sing'. It can almost be compared to a Russian basso profundo, a voice so low it is more like a rumbling sound in your bones. At the other end, the full hollows are closer to soprano and for extremely great shaves from a hollow a counter tenor - so pure a sound that it rises above gender and is almost angelic in its song.

So a wedge would be the grind of choice for on the job shaving emergencies if you were a ninja

Originally Posted by Razorfeld

With the near wedge and wedge grind you have to listen very carefully to hear it 'sing'. It can almost be compared to a Russian basso profundo, a voice so low it is more like a rumbling sound in your bones. At the other end, the full hollows are closer to soprano and for extremely great shaves from a hollow a counter tenor - so pure a sound that it rises above gender and is almost angelic in its song.

Yes, Richard! I do also adore the "Alto" voice of really old ones of crucible steel.