Before anyone jumps out there and bids up a"Chronik" for a few hundred bucks, Google "straight razor" and "Chronik" at the same time. The first page or so deals with the town in Germany and then you get to some discussion about the blade. After reading a few pages of that, it's apparent that it's not a consistent shaver at all. One discussion was an experiment with 3 or 4 of them and the results were not stellar. I'm not saying it's not a good blade, just that there is some indication that it's not a consistently good blade. I think the "Shave my face" forum has a pretty good analysis that I found.