Thread: Student Budget

I am also new to straight razor shaving i bought a dovo best quality a true solingen blade from www.vintagebladesllc.com setup along with a strop which ran around 120 then went to walmart and got the cheap setup mentioned above for around 8 bucks so i know its 30 dollars more than you wanted but you can be sure it will be shave ready lynn abrahms personally hones all the razors he is the founder of this forum anyways any problems you may run into in the future he is very helpfull.

Honestly, the cheap Dovo's are good and all, but they're boring and I think you'd like a nice vintage blade with character... like the one you picked. If you wanted a decorated Dovo (at roughly the same pimped level) it would cost over $100 for the razor alone.

Your going to have to take my opinion with a grain of salt because I'm the seller of the razor you linked.

You have been given great choices so far, no bad advice at all. If I were starting out again, I would not hesitate to buy from any of the vendors listed. HOWEVER, after toying with Fnord's DAs, I must regret that I must warn you to stay away from those razors. They are $10 for a reason.

The reasons include: poor grind, weird spine shape, slight smile with a straight spine, difficult to hone, really really really really really cheap scales. Unless all your going to do is send the razor out for honing and use pastes to upkeep it, the DA is not for a beginner. The thing is not easy to learn to hone on, and while it does take a good edge, it requires some advanced techniques to get around the slight smile, the poorly ground spine and the poorly ground shoulder. In sum, buy something else.

That said, I'm not sure if Ken regrinds the DA or just fixes up all the glaring problems, but personally, the problems are too many to bother with unless they are all fixed. But at that point the razor is going to cost over $100; and TBH, I am not entirely sure the steel is worth the investment. Can't comment as I will not have a DA for long enough to do some serious longevity tests. But thats my warning, take it with some salt.


As for the Casco, its a good little razor. Spike points can always be tamed, I've started taking off the very tip because when I stropped on my 3" spikes would spike it, and thats annoying.

Either case, the spike and round will still hurt if your careless. The spike just requires a little more care; which may be a good thing because its when you get ****y that the razor bites.