Thread: How did I do? Bought a razor from ebay.

Something else to watch with hollow grounds on ebay is the shoulder, I believe the term is. I got burned on that twice.

Basically the edge gets brought up in to the fat bit at the heel of the blade. There may be a trick for honing the razor despite this, but I haven't found it. The toe gets nice and sharp but the sharpness fades until about the mid point where it radically does downhill until you get to the heel and it's as dull as a butter knife.

I love your W&B Special!

Disclosure: I have a soft spot for Wade & Butcher razors. It was the only straight razor brand I could name when I shaved with DEs, I thought they were that cool. Now that that's out of the way...

I admit to being an avid dumpster-diver on eBay for abused W&Bs. When trying to learn to hone last fall, I leaned toward hobo-class eBay W&Bs that nobody else bid on. The best deal I ever got was two for $8 - shipped, no less- via BIN. I didn't buy any with large chips or broken scales, but any other flaw was fair game - severe rust and pitting, machine-gun fleabites, mismatched scales, cracked scales, "creative" grinding, visible small chips.

Every last one of them cleaned up, honed up, and were good to superb shavers, with some effort. W&B razors just seem to want to do right. I'd take a big chance on a W&B-branded razor that I wouldn't take on many others. OK, maybe a heavy old Greaves or Rodgers....