Thread: Need help

Little bit of research reveals the steel used in those razors is S45C - A medium carbon steel typically used for machine/structural use. The part of the description taht caught my eye:

JIS S45C grade carbon steel is widely used in machinery manufacturing, good mechanical properties of this steel. But S45C Grade Steel is a medium carbon steel, hardened performance is not good, 45 steel can be hardened to HRC42 ~ 46. So if you need to surface hardness, but also hopes to play 45 # steel superior mechanical properties, often 45 # steel surface carburizing, so you can get the required surface hardness. JIS S45c steel are mainly used for a variety of motor shaft, automotive parts.

So assuming they heat treated it properly, maximum hardness you could expect is a rockwell 46, typically for straight razors we're looking for mid 50s to low 60s. There's a bit of a trade off, at the higher end of the rockwell scale it's hard to remove material and get a working edge, on the lower end it's fast to sharpen because the steel wears faster, which leads to faster dulling as well. So it's probably a little on the soft side, and given Glen's test probably takes a nice edge but loses it faster than we would like. Slightly prettier/better ground Gold Dollar would be my guess.

Which means it's serviceable, you'll just be touching it up more than a higher quality blade. I can understand why folks wouldn't want to spend $100-$200 on a newer quality carbon steel blade. But my Gold Dollar edge typically lasts less than a month's worth of shaves. About 20 daily shaves is the longest it's lasted without a touch up. Meanwhile I have vintage razors bought off ebay (for probably less than I spent on the Gold Dollar) that were made before WWII that will hold an edge for several months.