Does anyone know anything about these? Are they good to use or a total rip off?
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Does anyone know anything about these? Are they good to use or a total rip off?
Stay away from them. A total rip-off!
Shit, I've already got one! What's the problem with them? At the moment, mine is about as sharp as a plastic knife. Is it that they dont sharpen?
total ripoff is an understatement. They are not well thought of at all here. read up here on brands. look through the razor clubs and familiarize yourself with the different razors before trying to buy a razor you will save a lot of money in the long run then look through the bst here and get a razor that is shave ready. dont try honing for a while till you read up on it just practice good stropping technic and you should be able to keep your edge sharp for quite a while by then you will know a lot more about things. take your time learn to walk then run and you should be fine. there are a lot of great people who will help you along the way here.
They are Pakistani steel which, as I understand it, are extremely inconsistent!
They don't take an edge. Lousy metal. On the bright side, they make great letter openers! ;)
Sorry, couldn't resist. :o
I wish I had found this place before I bought it!
So is there any hope of salvaging it at all? Because I live in Vancouver and this was pretty much the only razor and stone that I could find anywhere. I'm also willing to bet the hone they gave me sucks as well. Do you guys think it would help if I included the link to what I bought?
I doubt it. best to just move on. Saw where syslight offered to help in another thread drop him a pm you won't be sorry.
Don't bother including the link.
Take a look at our Buy/sell/trade or look at classicshaving.com!
I bet that the hone and strop are also pretty useless too, huh?
yes pretty much sorry.
You may want to start by reading this thread:
CRITICAL INFO FOR NEW MEMBERS!!: Read This Before Buying/Using A Straight Razor!! - Straight Razor Place Forums
If you can spare about $20, do yourself a favor and get Lynn Abram's DVD. It's lots of basic knowledge about straight edge razors in a very compact form.
BTW, welcome to SRP! If you're serious about straight razors, you came to the right place. Enjoy the ride!
Well, there's $60 I'll never get back. So do you know another safe site I can get a razor from? Preferrably not too pricey, since I'm a high school student ant this thing was a graduation present.
drop by the chat room
Thatnks a lot, all of you guys.
I 'm not sure I agree.
If I sell powertools on ebay, and I sell you a powerplus drill, you should not blame me for the fact that it is a crappy drill. I advertised it as-is, and you chose to buy it.
I have never sold, nor will I ever sell a powerplus tool. I don't sell tools at all. It was just an example.
But if I did, and you bought one, it would be your own fault.
60$ does not buy you a quality drill, nor does it buy you a quality razor + strop + hone.
TheMajor will not have known this, just as I didn't know that you don't store a loom strop under tension or that you don't lift the spine while stropping. Most of us ended up here after finding out the hard way that something was not right.
Consider it a rite of passage :)
Most sellers are ignorant; Not malicious.
Don't feel too bad, Been there, done that, and I suspect others have done the same but wont admit it :0) I had THREE of those for about a week and a half before throwing them in the dumpster. I bought them on the pretext of learning to hone, what a laugh !!! I even bought a 'zeepk' strop, another mistake. As an old Ricky Nelson song goes..... "I've learned my lesson well"
The old saying, buy cheap, get cheap rings true in this instance. Many of the SRP members sell restored razors at a VERY reasonable price and you will get a quality shave ready razor.
Good Luck my friend.
LIMIT
I disagree, Bruno. It isn't a straight razor, and a seller is supposed to know whether or not their product is genuine. If it can't ever be made to shave an adult male's face, it is false advertisement to call it a new straight razor. I won a PayPal dispute this way, and the only reason the seller continues to sell is that buyers are too afraid to leave a negative (well, they were at that time anyway. Seems ebay has changed the rules of late.) There's a difference between poor quality for its purpose and zero quality for its purpose. It's like selling a ball that won't bounce, or a wheel that doesn't roll. Zeepk's go too far and even though it is a manufacturing problem, the seller has a responsibility to correct the issue of continuing to auction them.
Always contact the seller before leaving a negative though, you are right in that most sellers are ignorant rather than malicious :)
P.S. the seller I dealt with claimed to be an experienced knife aficionado and claimed no ignorance for the junk razor, but rather fibbed that hundreds of his buyers had been very pleased with their junk. I believe that may be what sunk him
I got a decent, pre-honed Wapienica not too long ago from Mike Ratif. In Mike's case, pre-honed means actually shave-ready. Drop him a PM and see if he has any left.
@Bruno
A razor is a tool for shaving, so when you buy a razor you buy a tool to shave with. We all know that many straight razors are not shave ready out of the box, but can be made shave ready. So if Zeepk sells razors they sell a tool that a buyer should be able to get shave ready which is not the case with Zeepks. So I think an ebayer may want to leave a negative feed back on a razor that cannot be made to shave properly.
Moreover, but beside the point here, I think it is a crime to waste valuable resources on making sth that is unuseble.
Does anyone know about the quality of Colonel Conk brand razors?
OK, because I saw one at House of Knives today, and it was only about ten dollars cheaper than a DOVO. Also, I'm pretty sure any razor I buy in a major store like House of Knives would be of good quality, no?
well, not exactly. Ther are lots of pocket knives out there that look a lot like straight razors. While they were never designed to shave you but just to be pocket knives, some guys are fooled. They can even be froma pretty good maker of pocket knives and take a wicked ege for a knife but they still won't shave worth a darn.
It's amazing that you found a Col. Conk cheaper than a DOVO. Must not be DOVO's entry level razor then, the DOVO's can usually be found online for less than what the Col. Conk's go for since the col. just gets DOVO's and rebrands them.
Also, don't let house of knives try to sharpen your razor. Very few knive stores actually know how to sharpen a razor and will just mess it up badly when they try to treat it like a kitchen knife. I could be wrong and they might be great ith razors but I wouldn't take the chance. Instead send it to one of the guys who advertises here, all of the honmeisters on this site are genuine and will give you the sharpest edge possible.
You could also buy from one of the stores that sponsers this site. They all sell good quality products and offer honing services to their customers as well.
So I should go ahead and grab the Conk then?
And Hosue of Knives even told me that they're not trained in razor sharpening. My friend claims he knows a guy who hones them somewhere nearby, so he's my next best bet. As for the DOVO stuff, apparently honing it with anyone else but them (apparently myself included) results in voiding the warranty. And to have them sharpen it I have to send it to California. >_>
:shrug::thinking: Never heard that about DOVO. Since they are made in Germany I don't know why you would have to send it to California?:thinking: I'd double check that if I were you.
Before you grab the conk and since your on here anyway, head over to the Buy Sell Trade section and look at a few to the razors that have been sold to newbies around here. While there might not be anything available right now that will give you some sort of idea as to what sort of prices they can go for if you get a used one that comes ready to use.
Here is one vendors DOVO's
Vintage Blades LLC :: Dovo Straight Razors :: Dovo Carbon Steel Straight Razors
Here's another:
DOVO Straight Razors
Add twenty bucks to the price of either for honing, and you'll get a good idea what a NEW Razor starts at.
Yeah, I mean why would getting it honed by a third party be such a big deal?
Because they probably don't know what they are talking about... a razor is just that and supposed to be used. And what does their warranty cover?
For what my advice is worth, you really should check out the BST part of this forum. I bought my starter kit in the (now extinct) classified adds part os this forum and was satisfied with it. You could also invest a bit more (not much) on a vintage blade from Introduction to razors. Steven Dempster also sells starter kit at reasonable prices... In the end the decision is yours. But if my own experience serves me right, I would buy from this comunity... here you won't be fooled and you will get what you are paying for. Plus you get a lifetime supply of tips, suggestions and help from all the people in here. There are some experts sufing arround... ;)
Good luck, and welcome to the comunity!
Francisco
TheMajor,
Put in a WTB in the buy/sell/trade area of the forum and tell folks you are looking for a good starter straight. Folks here will fix you up. Some will do it for $100 an some will do it for $40 or so. Each of them is worth it. You'll just get fancier equipment with the higher cost. But it will all be quality and worth it.
Read the forums and learn what you need but the folks here won't over charge you or steer you wrong.;)
I don't want to go to the BST and I'd rather get the Conk because someone still wants to get it for me as a grad present and I just needed to know if it was shave quality.
A Col. Conk will work but it will need to be honed. if memory serves they are re-branded low end Dovo's