Thread: Modified Gold Dollar

When you first joined this forum you were thinking of a Dovo. What made you decide on a GD?

I love that they call him Master Shifu. What a nice touch to the history!

There's only one manly way to settle this and that is a honing show down.
In the corner to my left, from China, is 67 year old Master Shifu and in the corner to my right, from the U.S.A., is Lynn Abrams of SRD.
I'll test shave Lynn's razor...........someone else can test shave Master Shifu's.

I have a Gold Dollar I purchased from Straight Razors dot com. I should have found this forum first, however I did not. I bought a "kit" with a brush, strop, preshave oil, aftershave and soap as well as the razor for 69 bucks. The first thing i would do is have it honed by one of the masters on this forum. It will be the best $ you can spend. Cudarunner is who does mine, look him up on here on the forum. He took my shave ready GD and made it a decent daily shaver. I'm happy with it... I have also purchased a couple of vintage razors, (like I should have done in the first place), to move away from the GD. However I'm happy with it after Roy worked it over. Like the others have said, get you a strop, soap and a brush... ya need all the tools for the job, can't overhaul an engine with duct tape and a screwdriver... well, my dad could but that is another story.

I also bought a custom strop and gave my synthetic to my son.
Enjoy. There is a wealth of info on the forum, reach out the guys are nice and will help you out anyway they can...

Keep us all up to date..
Mike

Did you get a reasonable deal?? IMO, you paid about $28.99 too much...

The blade rings when you touch it?? Probably because it's made from old recycled Toyota horns...

Just kidding, well not really... But I have heard that the GD's actually do shave ... after a bit of work.

Thanks for your responses guys. I did expect a bit of snobbery and negativity about the Chinese made razor, its no big deal. No offence taken!

I should point out the Gold Dollar I bought (800) is not the cheap $8 model (66, 200, 208). Its the better quality model that rivals the starter Dovo in terms of blade metal quality. I read several reviews that said is stands up just as well as a Dovo for a beginner razor. For the price I paid, plus the fact it had free shipping to Canada, and it came honed and shave ready, I think it was a decent deal overall. A Dovo would have cost me easily 4 or 5 times as much!

I decided to try this on out first instead of getting a Dovo, or a vintage blade because I was not (and am not) totally sure straight razor shaving is something I'll really get into and do on a regular basis.

Please understand the hype of Master Shifu.

The Gold Dollars sell well because they are cheap. So do/did the Zeepks, and the Masters, and the Venus razors. They all chose a price point that was to maximize their profit. Sometimes they lowballed and sometimes they charged over $50 but there was no particular correlation with "value" or quality.

We had a "Master" here. He joined and laid low for a while. He never participated in honing discussions at first but he did spend a lot of time PMing me and a few other people in order to discretely learn how to hone. After a while he did join in discussions about honing, and he demonstrated an excellent skill in the art of cutting and pasting the advice he had gained from us. Shortly after, he declared himself to be a honemeister (a word I detest since it was conferred upon one person by one person) named Master Diao, that he had over 10 years of honing experience under his belt (personally I prefer to hone on a table or in my hand), had honed thousands of razors, and honed better than anyone else to the extent that he patented the name (mind you, just the name) of his honing process.

Do you really believe that some old "master" has taken on the job of honing all of the ebay Gold dollars? There is not much of a difference between the Gold Dollar 66 and the 800. Two of the ebay photos show that not all of the "master's" work succeeded in correcting the stabilizer and a master should have known better than to hone onto the stabilizer.

Master Diao and Shifu are just hype. I think it is quite likely that your razor will shave better after someone competent hones it.

I would love to get one of Shifu's razors under my microscope. I would happily post a video of a full scan of the entire length of both bevels, regardless of what it reveals.

Originally Posted by Utopian

I would love to get one of Shifu's razors under my microscope. I would happily post a video of a full scan of the entire length of both bevels, regardless of what it reveals.

Well, I'll send you mine, still unused and exacty as it came in the mail. You can video and photograph it all you like, post the results here, on the condition you hone it for free if it proves to be lacking? Deal?

Originally Posted by GrumpyCat

Thanks for your responses guys. I did expect a bit of snobbery and negativity about the Chinese made razor, its no big deal. No offence taken!

I should point out the Gold Dollar I bought (800) is not the cheap $8 model (66, 200, 208). Its the better quality model that rivals the starter Dovo in terms of blade metal quality. I read several reviews that said is stands up just as well as a Dovo for a beginner razor. For the price I paid, plus the fact it had free shipping to Canada, and it came honed and shave ready, I think it was a decent deal overall. A Dovo would have cost me easily 4 or 5 times as much!

I decided to try this on out first instead of getting a Dovo, or a vintage blade because I was not (and am not) totally sure straight razor shaving is something I'll really get into and do on a regular basis.

I don't know if it is snobbery so much as negativity about Chinese razors. There are quite a few posts on here where beginners have asked why they could not get a shave out of a Chinese razor they had bought as a first razor. Personally I do not generally associate the cost of an item directly to it's quality. I hope you get a decent shave from it.

Having never shaved with a straight razor before you really do not know what shave ready feels like in use so you have nothing to judge it against. It would take an experienced straight razor user's word that it is shave ready out of the box but I can't recall any posting on here that the Chinese razor they had was shave ready out of the box. There have been a few posts saying that they had to heavily re work the blade in order to get it shave ready and some that said once shave ready it did not hold an edge long.

So yes, there is quite a bit of negativity surrounding Chinese razors here and for good reason. Hopefully you razor will be an exception to the past experiences posted on here.

Bob

Originally Posted by GrumpyCat

Thanks for your responses guys. I did expect a bit of snobbery and negativity about the Chinese made razor, its no big deal. No offence taken!

I should point out the Gold Dollar I bought (800) is not the cheap $8 model (66, 200, 208). Its the better quality model that rivals the starter Dovo in terms of blade metal quality. I read several reviews that said is stands up just as well as a Dovo for a beginner razor. For the price I paid, plus the fact it had free shipping to Canada, and it came honed and shave ready, I think it was a decent deal overall. A Dovo would have cost me easily 4 or 5 times as much!

I decided to try this on out first instead of getting a Dovo, or a vintage blade because I was not (and am not) totally sure straight razor shaving is something I'll really get into and do on a regular basis.

After reading all your posts on SRP (7) since last year, its clear your only concern was cost. In your last post here, your still not sure if straight razor shaving is for you. It's taken a year for you to come back with a Gold Dollar,,,,,

I do hope you find the path to this wonderful journey, as it makes shaving a pleasure.