I'm sure that I'm not the first to have this happen, but I figured I'd share...

My family was celebrating a friend's birthday, and one of his wife's gifts to him was a cutlass and scabbard embossed with skull & crossbones, ship, etc. It was a novelty item, though it was made of steel. After the presentation I was handed a small box as well. I was rather confused since I thought we were there to give gifts instead of receive them. I opened the box to see a new Kreigar razor in a felt pouch. I was told that the wife saw it when she purchased the sword and she immediately thought of me.

Both of them know of my shaving "hobby" with the different soaps, razors, etc., and though they (and my wife) roll their eyes they figure it's not much different than any other hobby in which people enjoy talking about, collecting related items and such. In my circle of friends we all have our own slightly less than normal things that we enjoy.

I didn't have the heart to say anything about the reputation this brand of razors has among people that use a straight razor on a daily basis. However, after looking at the razor I realized that the scales appear to be made of black and blue G10, or an equivalent. They aren't of uniform thickness, but they're still much nicer than the scales that came with the DA I recently received. After that thought hit me I could genuinely thank them for the razor. They've just saved me a bunch of work to create a set of replacement scales.

The good news is that they'll recognize the gift razor by the scales, not the blade, so they will probably never know that the blade was swapped. I'll be hitting up the nearby hobby shop for some brass rod and washers really soon.

- Mark (S-4-C)