Thread: Bought a New Vintage -- Now what?

Most of the time, yes, but sometimes it can be entertaining to shave with a 50+ year old edge. Some of them might surprise you.

I've bought three over the years with the factory edge that was shave ready, one was a NOS Dubl Duck and it actually had an amazing edge!

Originally Posted by Utopian

Most of the time, yes, but sometimes it can be entertaining to shave with a 50+ year old edge. Some of them might surprise you.

OK. Watched Lynn's Norton stone video one last time. Went through the 4k/8k stones. When I started, the stria from polishing on the blade went all the way across the bevel to the edge. Now the bevel looks shiny to the naked eye, shinyish at 30 magnification and what I presume are 8k stria visible at 60 magnification. The edge-on view at 60 magnification looks keen and uniform. To my thumb it feels pretty much like the professionally honed razor from SRD. It will shave hair from my arm anywhere along the blade without catching and without any effort or pressure. I have some work to do now, but sometime later I will finish on the 12k and test shave with it tomorrow morning if I have time. If all goes well , it looks like it's going to turn out to be a really nice, inexpensive, vintage razor.

I'm sure that I will refine my technique as I go along and gain skill points. If this one actually turns out well, I'll chalk it up to beginners luck. I'm sure that there are many, many razors that won't be as cooperative as this one appeared to be.

Utopian, rodb,

I would imagine the difference is whether you are buying someone's razor that he actually shaved with or one that some fellow picked up at a flea market and polished up for sale. For example, I'll bet there are plenty of actual "shave ready" razors for sale in the classifieds here on this web site. eBay is a bit of a sketchier situation. It doesn't take long to tell if it's shave ready or not though.

The classifieds here are way different than Ebay or anywhere else, if it says "shave ready" I would believe it.

I should have said three from Antique stores/Flea mkts, I've probably bought 300 Antique store razors over the years with only three being shave ready

Originally Posted by Uzi

Utopian, rodb,

I would imagine the difference is whether you are buying someone's razor that he actually shaved with or one that some fellow picked up at a flea market and polished up for sale. For example, I'll bet there are plenty of actual "shave ready" razors for sale in the classifieds here on this web site. eBay is a bit of a sketchier situation. It doesn't take long to tell if it's shave ready or not though.

Woo hoo! By 5:00 PM I had developed a bit (a tiny bit) of stubble following this morning's BBS shave. It was enough to test whether this dog was going to hunt though. Broke out a boar brush, some Catie's Bubbles and had at it with the freshly redone W. H. Morley. I'm proud to say that I did 3 passes (1 WTG, 2 XTG opposite directions) and that newly formed stubble is officially and smoothly gone. No pulling, no tugging, no scraping, no scratching and there's no irritation at all. I could hear those little buggers popping as I went. I'm back to BBS and have honed my first razor from bevel set, all the way through the set of stones and crox.

Thanks to Lynn and gssixgun for the videos and the rest of you for the advise I got here. I couldn't have done it right without ya'll. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go faceturbate.

Congratulations.

Over time you will acquire more challenging razors and you will learn much more as you figure out how to successfully deal with them.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Congratulations.

Over time you will acquire more challenging razors and you will learn much more as you figure out how to successfully deal with them.

Thanks, I appreciate that very much.

I'm under no delusions that I am now a honemeister. When I selected a razor on which to learn razor honing, I was very particular about which razors I bid on. If the razor was over $50 I passed. If there was any existing rust I passed. If there was pitting anywhere near the blade edge, I passed. If there were any visible chips whatsoever, I passed. If the blade did not look perfectly straight, I passed. The goal was to find a razor that was as near perfect as I could find for under $50, so that if I screwed it up I wouldn't be out enough money to worry much about it.

This particular razor is about 9/11" and may well have started out its life as a 5/8" AFAIK. It had a very straight edge, no rust and no pitting on the blade. It looked like it originally had a good bevel set and there was only one microchip, that was only visible under magnification. The only thing wrong with the blade was that whoever worked on it polished the blade all the way down to the edge leaving a lot of stria and (I'm guessing) ended up misaligning the edge from too much pressure on one side during that process. So I didn't have to do any "real" difficult stuff. All I had to do was straightforward honing from the beginning to end -- which was my learning goal. I don't plan on becoming a honing expert. I don't plan on becoming a razor restoration expert. All I want to be able to do is own top quality blades and keep them that way for whatever amount of time I have left on earth. Then I would like to be able to pass those blades on to my grandson who is a wet shaver. I'm just a stubbornly self-reliant old coot who doesn't like to rely on others to do anything at all for me that I can possibly do for myself -- plus its fun to learn how to do new things.

I had my first real shave with that razor this morning and it's now plenty sharp and a very smooth shaver and being so narrow at 9/11" it's very nimble. I like it a lot and I also like the history behind the Clover brand.