OK, before I get into this, let me put a disclaimer up front: I'm not Dovo bashing here. Dovo makes good razors, which is a good thing, 'cause they're pretty much it when it comes to new blades. That said...

Right now I'm honing a seven-day set of new Dovos for a member. He was frustrated with several of them because the heel just wouldn't seem to get sharp.

So far I've worked on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. On all four of these blades I found the same issue. When layed face down on a lapped hone, that is, with the Dovo logo facing down, the heel of the razor wasn't touching the hone at all. The severity of the gap varied from almost nothing to 1mm or more.

Basically, an inch of the heel doesn't get honed on one side of the razor if you use a normal X pattern. If you don't change your stroke to accomodate this, you end up with a wire edge on the heel that will continue to redevelop even after it's removed.

I have noticed this same issue on other Dovo razors and on a lot of vintage blades that I've honed. It's almost like the blade has a slight twist to it. It always seems to be the same side of the blade, too.

So I finally decided to contact Dovo about this. They responded very quickly, less than eight hours later. Here's what I was told:

Dear Josh,

Thank you very much for your email. I will gladly try to answer your questions. Prior to the final honing of the straight razor, which is done on a Belgian waterstone, the blade is subjected to grinding on a horizontal wheel, which is slightly convex on the surface. Hence the razors will not be completely even when put on a flat surface. Since that wheel grinding is done by hand as well, there will not be two razors absolutely identical. This has been done that way for many decade, so the vintage razors show the same "uneven" shape.

This is why we strongly recommend for the "untrained" user to stay away from sharpening. It takes skill and a long time of practice to NOT damage the blade in the process.

I hope I could answer your question to your satisfaction.

Best regards,
Anne Rothstein

Very courteous response, I thought.

But it leaves me wondering, why does this seem to happen so frequently, and in the same pattern? I'm curious as to whether it might be because most of the grinders are right-handed, so if there's any unevenness it would tend to reoccur in the same fashion over and over...

Has anyone else noticed this? Do most of your razors lay flat on the hone?

Just looking to gather some data...

Josh