Thread: Titan Straight Razor Unboxing - Shave To Follow Tomorrow

I'm with Marty on the heal. Way too much going on there for an edge to come away clean and smooth without being all over the stabilizer. Not dissing the razor yet. Just the heal at this point.

All the Chinese razors have issues, most can be made to shave some, shave well. But they will still have issues.

You can repair the blade, hone, and rescale, (they either have stiff clunky or thin rubbery scales, but you will still have a cheap Chinese razor of questionable steel and poorly ground.

Or you can pick up a 50-100-year-old pristinely ground vintage quality razor from great steel, for 10-20 dollars from any flea market or antique store. A clean up with steel wool and metal polish and a good honing and you will have a lifetime quality razor from the pinnacle of razor making, by the masters of the craft.

The other day I picked up this Double Duck Gold Edge for $10 in the original box. It will clean up with just a bit of steel wool, and polish and I will probably be able to keep most of the original Gold Wash. It was probably never use and at least never honed. BTW, it also could use some heel correction.

So, when you look at it through that lens, a 30-50 Chinese razor is not that great a bargain. It is your money.

They can be made to shave, I call all the Chinese razors, Kit Razors, with work you can make a shaver.

Nice find on that Double Duck! I'd love to find one in that condition for $10. Heck, $50 would be a good deal on that.

I think that $25 on a vintage razor is better than $25 on a Chinese razor, but both are "projects". A good vintage razor that is already cleaned up and honed can be had for $100 or so on this forum. To me those are the real bargains if you are not doing it as a project.

Getting a cheap Chinese razor to shave well and re-scaling it is good practice and I can see it being very rewarding.

Finding a good deal on a vintage razor is half the fun on it's own. It's a treasure hunt and you get to go to all kinds of flea markets and antique stores. Then once it is found, you get to restore it and hone it.

If your doing it for fun, then each has it's own challenges and rewards. To each his own.

I like to recycle old pieces of steel into razors. Most knife makers frown on this now days as the steel is unknown and can have faults such as stress fractures and it may not heat treat predictably. However, that is half the challenge. Sure I can buy a piece of O1 and grind it into a knife, but how many guys can forge an actual razor (not just a RSO) from an old farm plow that will actually shave well?

A good use for Chinese razors is the preparation of my pipe tobacco. You have to touch up the edge after each use. Who cares? They are cheap!

Originally Posted by rolodave

A good use for Chinese razors is the preparation of my pipe tobacco. You have to touch up the edge after each use. Who cares? They are cheap!

That reminds me of a book I read about shaving. The author recalls an event where he was aghast when his companion pulled out a straight razor and used it to trim the end off of his cigar. If it had been a Gold Dollar, the memory probably wouldn't have made it into the publication.

Titans are definitely not Gold Dollars but there are some similarities. Member rscebu on B&B is very knowledgeable on these and owns probably every model that they make. They use several different alloys and different price tiers in each. He quite likes them, for some reason. The bevel angle is even wider than the classic GD models and the scales look terribly heavy to me. From a strictly metallurgical standpoint they are apparently fairly sophisticated. Like all Chinese razors, the factory would benefit from having a proper razorsmith onsite. Grain of salt here since I have never actually examined any Titans in person.

Cosmetically, at least, fit and finish is somewhat better than the common GD models. They do a good job of making razor scales that look and feel like a pocketknife handle. Some might regard that as a good thing. I don't.

Oddly enough I was sent a sample razor by Cici at the GD factory with no model number or brand markings that appeared to be an attempt at cloning a Titan. I was not able to get any information on it from her. I found it almost impossible to hone and strop, and I never got around to shaving with it. The scales were crazy heavy. The steel was fine, The scales were monstrous. I sent it to my contact for XRF testing and TBH I don't remember if he ever got around to testing it or not, what with the difficulty of getting in the door at his workplace due to lockdown. Anyway they would not clone a Titan if they were already making them. And I may be wrong, but I think they are actually made in Taiwan. I will have to ask rscebu about that.

<EDIT> I meant rbscebu, not rscebu. And yeah, made in Taiwan.

I posted about this once before in another thread a few years ago.

I have a friend who is a water filtration expert and was hired by a California company to design a globally marketable water filtration system. He designed the system and made working prototypes.

Then they hired a well-established Chines manufacture to produce the filter, it did not work. They disassembled it to find out most all the tolerances were off.

He went to China to observe the process and found that they had to be watched constantly and it got to the point he was living 2 weeks in China, 2 weeks in California. Each time he returned, the person or persons he had trained had left the company and gone across the street to make a penny more.

Each time he returned to China, they had lost ground and parts were junk. As soon as he turned his back, they would farm out production and at times to multiple vendors each of which cut corners and specs went out the window.

After 2 years the US company gave up on production. It is a systemic problem as the workers will leave a company for another literally for a penny more, and each vendor will modify materials to save a penny even if it means altering specs. And not saying anything about intellectual theft.

While the steel may be “sophisticated” in design and even in some production, they will eventually cut corners, you see it now in the finish and grinding already.

So, it will always be a Kit Razor, cause like the box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.

Originally Posted by Euclid440

After 2 years the US company gave up on production. It is a systemic problem as the workers will leave a company for another literally for a penny more, and each vendor will modify materials to save a penny even if it means altering specs. And not saying anything about intellectual theft.


So, it will always be a Kit Razor, cause like the box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.

I believe it. We are getting a bit off-topic here, but I used to work in the metal manufacturing industry. China could make metal cheaper and faster than we ever could. The only reason that we were still in business was because our quality was so much higher. Our main customers became places like the US military (armor plate), Boeing, Airbus, MD Helicopters and the like. We sold to companies where quality and traceability were of primary concern. Our "Run of the mill" products were basically all lost to China. "Box of chocolates" is a good analogy.

Originally Posted by Euclid440

I posted about this once before in another thread a few years ago.

I have a friend who is a water filtration expert and was hired by a California company to design a globally marketable water filtration system. He designed the system and made working prototypes.

Then they hired a well-established Chines manufacture to produce the filter, it did not work. They disassembled it to find out most all the tolerances were off.

He went to China to observe the process and found that they had to be watched constantly and it got to the point he was living 2 weeks in China, 2 weeks in California. Each time he returned, the person or persons he had trained had left the company and gone across the street to make a penny more.

Each time he returned to China, they had lost ground and parts were junk. As soon as he turned his back, they would farm out production and at times to multiple vendors each of which cut corners and specs went out the window.

After 2 years the US company gave up on production. It is a systemic problem as the workers will leave a company for another literally for a penny more, and each vendor will modify materials to save a penny even if it means altering specs. And not saying anything about intellectual theft.

While the steel may be “sophisticated” in design and even in some production, they will eventually cut corners, you see it now in the finish and grinding already.

So, it will always be a Kit Razor, cause like the box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.

Quite correct. The concept of "Good Enough" is overriding all other considerations in Chinese mass manufacturing. They are CAPABLE of making good products. Take the Astra IIIb sextant, for instance. But getting them to strive for excellence is an epic task. Anyway I just verified this. The Titan razors are made in Taiwan, not China.

I have tried and tried to get the folks at GD to make a razor with the proper bevel angle and a heel that does not swell outward into the stabilizer. I haven't had much luck. As long as they can sell razors at a profit they don't care, and you get what you get. This is typical. There is no Master Grinder. Just factory slugs for whom razormaking is absolutely not a career. The best that they are willing to do is their P81 model which you really ought to try someday. It's no Tanifuji, but it hones and shaves a lot easier than the classic models. When I run out of all the others, this will be the only one I will continue to sell.

Perhaps the biggest fault with Chinese copycat manufacturing is they copy a picture, not the item, and certainly they don't capture the full functionality of an item that they are cloning. This dimension, that dimension, irrelevant. They don't show up in the ebay or alibaba listing, so not important. Looks like the real thing? Good enough.

Unfortunately because of buyer ignorance, the business model is very profitable.

If attention to detail and tolerances is a requirement, China is generally not the place to source from. They only do what they have to do to sell the product, and usually that means selling it for 1/10 what the real deal would cost made in USA or Europe or Japan. And to sell that cheap, they have to cut corners and treat their workers like dogs and unlike dogs, they are not still loyal even after getting kicked around by their masters.

When you can live with Chinese standards, the price is unbeatable. When you don't know any better, you will learn the difference between value and price.

Here is an interesting site with reviews on tools from China, and what they can do, when they want to.

But even this guy complains about the quality of some tools has droped from originals to later production.

Some nice looking stuff, probably knock offs of other brands, even the finish. Would be interesting to know if they made the product for the original US maker or were complete knock offs.

(Hooked On Wood, China Tools review).