Thread: Found my grand-grandfather's old razor!

Originally Posted by JackeHj

Hello from Åbo(Turku), Finland!

The last 3 weeks I have been reading a lot in this forum and soon i will be ready to try shaving like a man, haven't bought any supplies yet thou. Anyway, I asked my grandfather if he ever used a straight razor, he never did :/ but he rememberd his father do it. So we started looking and found my grand-grandfathers old razor.

It is an D. Peres "The Columbia" Solingen 5/8. From the 1920's.




So I have some questions:

1. Do any of you know a place (in Finland, or many even in turku) where I can get this honed and shave ready?
2. Can I learn to shave with this razor? Is D. Peres razors any good? Any experiences?
3. If I should by another to start with I have my eyes on the Dovo carpe deim 5/8 or the Ralf Aust Solingen 6/8 round point. Any recommendations?

Thanx a lot for all the great information on this site!

From another newbie, Welcome!

Nice looking razor! I also recently received my Great-Grandfather's straight razor. For now, it sits, with the blade oiled, undisturbed. I intend to hone it myself, once I have a little more experience at honing. Later, I might do a full restore once I have experience with that. I want to make all my mistakes on somebody else's family heirloom, not mine! If it was me, I would buy a few shave-ready straights first, then learn to shave with them, then learn to hone on them, and THEN, hone the one that really matters. But I see you already have a most excellent and generous offer from Birnando. The straight razor community is one of the most generous and sharing bunch of guys I have ever been priveliged to be a part of.

Of course you can learn to shave with that razor. (Don't drop it!)

Well, like I said, it would be my choice to learn on something more expendable. Stuff happens.

The markings on the blade are etching. It is done either with an acid resist ink and chemicals, or with electricity through a stencil. The modern way is to use a laser. I was privileged recently to watch a guy electro-etch a few blades. Along with some new tools. That's old school. Old time mechanics 100 years ago etched their names or initials in their tools. Anyway yours looks very deep and bold, and I am thinking that normal polishing won't mess it up at all. Very impressive, I would say, too.

By the way, I don't know if you know this, but the number of stars on the U.S. flag is the number of states. So if you count the stars, and look up the years for the number of states, you can get a pretty good idea of when the artwork was done for the etching, and date the razor. For instance, if there are 33 stars, look up the year the 33rd state and the 34th state joined the union and that is the time frame for this razor, I would expect. I doubt that back then, they would have just put some random number of stars on there. Just sayin.