Thread: First razor guidance

Thanks everyone for your responses, it's good to hear some other people (who have more experience than me) their opinion.

Chris, I live in a village quite near Oxford called Tackley - but I don't expect you to have heard of it! Looking on ebay, there are some interesting prospects... but they don't generally seem to be shave-ready.

Would I be right in assuming that, for a first-timer, the 'shave-readiness' is an invaluable feature?

With regards to the Dovo vs the F&M, both are from the same people, albeit they are on different websites. The F&M is on Introduction to razors, the Dovo is on Home, and they also have a sharpening service that I think you can get to on their site (I'm not affiliated to them in any way, just to be clear). They seem very reasonably priced, much cheaper than other places I've seen, and more importantly hone and strop all the razors they sell (which is the point of this semi-digression) - that is to say that the F&M doesn't really win on that account.

After paying a bit more attention, the F&M has beaten the Dovo here (although there may be something else that could convince me otherwise) for a few reasons:

1) The Dovo isn't currently in stock there and could take up to 6 months to come back into stock, and elsewhere it is another ~£10 more expensive

2) The Dovo only came with scales of a colour that I didn't like ('blonde' I think it's called), which would probably end in me trying to make and attach new scales myself... quite possibly making it unusable - not what you want for your first and only razor!

3) theinvisibleedge attach the scales on a per order basis, and as a result of this, they've said that they can also supply nicer/more expensive handles than the plastic ones that are shown. I've emailed to inquire as to what materials and the additional cost, and I'll let you know once I find out.

4) the lower price of the F&M (maybe not with the better handles! - but the Dovo comes with similar plastic handles anyway I think, so this is added value) doesn't hurt

5) I quite like the idea of an NOS - to some degree it feels like a collector's item; I know there are loads of ex-production razors circulating, but there are only 400 of these, and they're unused, whereas I could buy a new Dovo at any time. Even though I'm not hugely patriotic, I also get a little more enthusiastic over the fact it's made in Sheffield rather than in another country (Solingen, Germany).

I would be interested to know from a purely pragmatic point of view whether anyone knows of any steel quality differences between Solingen and Sheffield and whether that should be a factor.


Sorry for the long post guys,
Thanks again for all your help,
Andrew