Thread: New from Austin

Hello all! Mark from ATX here, really excited to find that there is a brain trust of straight razor knowledge on the net! A bit about me first, I'm 28 years old, born and raised in Austin, and currently work as a firefighter in the west part of Travis county. I'm not one of those serial hobbyist sort of guys, but a bunch of us at the firehouse have been talking about using straights for a while, and I've decided to become the first one to take the leap. Finding myself temporarily in Baltimore with a surplus of free time, I found a store downtown, and purchased a few things to start off with. Although not ready to use it yet, I bought myself a silver tip brush, some unscented truefitt&hill cream, and finally, a dovo Olivewood handle #875. I think I may have fouled up there, as everything I've read warns the beginner to stay away from a stainless blade. Oddly enough, the girl in the store told me it was a carbon steel blade, that company's website advertises it as the same (quintessential gentleman), yet several other websites report this model to be stainless, and perhaps most telling, the blade plainly says "stainless inoxydable steel". I'm a little worried about this, but perhaps someone can shed some light on whether or not I should stick with it for the time being. All in all, excited to have found the forums, and look forward to meeting some new people!

Welcome to Straight Razor Place!

Welcome to SRP! It's good to meet someone else from ATX! Stainless steel has it's advantages and disadvantages.

Pro's: It is stainless so chances of rust and pitting are a bit lower, it tends to hold an edge a bit longer than carbon steel.

Con's: Stainless can take a little more work to get honed up but not too bad. I have a stainless Dovo and it does take a bit more work for me to get a good edge on it but we're talking minimal extra effort here.

Good luck and make sure that thing has been professionally honed before using it!