Originally Posted by
JimR
Bill, I would hesitate to call razors being made in batches of 2-3, by one man, mass produced. And as his teacher literally wrote the book on Japanese razor honing, and he himself teaches others razor honing, I honestly trust that Miozuochi-san knows what he is doing.
Just for complete clarity:
Before I got any of these razors in my hands, I assumed that they would not be shave ready, as many people would I think. Thus I arranged with my barber to hone them for people, because I do not like the idea of sending non-shave ready razors to people. Like O_S said, we discussed this in private chat, and my assumption seemed to be supported by the experience of someone who contacted us both about honing a newly purchased Iwasaki razor (purchased from a brick and mortar store in the US, not from me).
However, when the razors actually arrived, I found that they did, in fact, have very keen edges--with stropping, they passed my arm hair test with NO popping, the hairs just lay down. I only have a few razors that do that, all of them honed by very experienced honers (like Sham, Ken Rupkialvis, Lee, et al.) and I thought "That looks good, why mess with that edge?" so I sent them out.
The people who received these razors all seem to agree that they are shave ready. That's good enough for me.