Thread: Chronik razors?

So I've been reading alot on the forum of late and one of the names that occasionally crops up is Chronik.

The way that the name is mentioned suggests that this is the Holy Grail, Ark of the Covenant and general all round definative article of razors, delivered to your door in the mouth of an albino tiger cub.

Having had a look in the SRP Wiki and read the shavemyface.com article on these razors though, I'm not convinced.

Does anyone on this forum own a Chronik? Are they actually as good as consensus would suggest or is this just one of those myths thats arisen from the mists of time?

I'm not looking to track one down or buy one or anything, I'm just curious as to why these are allegedly so good and what peoples experiences have been of them.

Cheers folks!

Stu

http://straightrazorpalace.com/aucti...s-chronik.html tells it all, if you ask me. The Chronik is the classic example of why they say that power corrupts. A single review can make the price for a razor go completely through the roof, although there really isn't any justification for that in reality (see the SMF thread).

Incidentally, that review made me do two things:

1. Dispel the Chronik myth by presenting the Only True Razor: http://straightrazorpalace.com/show-...baby-seal.html.
2. Help reshape the old review forum to its current form, so that member reviews get weighted, too (provided you guys actually attribute ratings, which you should when replying).

That's it, really. Given the prices the Chroniks fetched on eBay, you might as well burn USD 250, and get a razor that really works for USD 50 from the Classifieds.

Happy hunting,
Robin

The legendary status of the awe-inspiring Chronik razor has been an in-joke on the forums for some considerable time now. For a very long time only one person owned a Chronik, and he started the myth making, including the one where it didn't need to be stropped in over 40 shaves. Finally, a few came up on ebay around the same time, and some of the members here and on SMF got to try the legendary Chronik brand for themselves. Turned out that they were average at best, and some of them were very poor. Still, those Chroniks were nothing like the original uber-Chronik according to the owner, so maybe somewhere out there, there are more of these special Chroniks waiting for a worthy owner.

Kindest regards,
Alex

Yeah, I was wondering whether there was a bit of "in-jokery" going on here...! Now I know..! :-)

Thanks for the responses guys!

Please don't spell the name out, but rather refer to as the Chr*nik, lest you be smote by lighting!

Unfortunately my chest hair falls off out of sheer fright every time I merely read that hallowed name, so I'm kind of itchy right now and look silly with all this back hair, belly hair and yet no chest hair. Please be more careful in the future.

Funny you should ask. I own about three of them. I’ve been reminiscing about my Chroniks for a while and have been Googling the name for any new info that may have shown up on the web in the last two years. I found some new info but it only seemed to confirm what we who reviewed them suspected regarding their relation to one another. Let me explain what I mean by this. Two of my Chroniks are named Heinrik Klein yet bear the same logo as the Chronik named razor (the Queen of Hearts). Some info I dug up just the other day suggested that Chronik is just a different brand of Heinrik Klein not the other way around. At any rate they’re the same exact razor save for the name.

When these razors came up those of us who were around on the original Yahoo StraightRazorPlace forum, when the original claims were made, saw our chance. I snagged the first at an exorbitant price. Then the second emerged and Mr. Parker snagged that one. Then some of these Heinrick Kleins started showing up with the same logo as the Chroniks and they didn’t generate any real interest because I don’t think anyone noticed they were the same. Well, one person noticed but he was kind enough to let it slip into my hands in order to further the experiment we were about to conduct.

In short Mr. Parker and I sent our razors to one another and to two other seasoned straight razor users who were personally familiar with the original claims to form a well rounded opinion. We did what we wanted to them to test them, no restrictions. We did not share opinions until all had a chance to evaluate them. As you can see we had pretty much a consensus. Chroniks are nothing special and can be downright awful because of their variability and the chance of getting a bad one. The reason they are probably rare is that they were not consistent in their quality and even the good ones weren’t anything particular to admire. I also think that they might have had their heyday of production during WWII and therefore the variability of the steel may be due to the war effort. Who knows.

In the end these don’t even come close to being anything like the Holy Grail of razors. The most plausible explanation for the earliest owner’s claimed experience is the explanation given by Dr. Moss and that is that the owner probably had a ragged edge caused by the swaty he used to hone it. It had probably been honed on a little bit in it’s day when he received it and the swaty he used just banged up the edge on a micro level good enough to cause his Chronik to tear hair instead of shave it. After all, the majority of these we looked at have softer steel and he only used 10 strokes to hone it. I would find it hard to believe anything else.

Best Regards,
EL

You must be talking about a different Chronik then, because the highly respected owner of another shaving forum still claims that "It is without question the best razor I have ever experienced, and I only use it MAX 1-2X a year on very special occasions, as everytime I use it, I REALLY want to make it my daily shaver, but since I have so many other razors (and so many I want to keep) I don't want to have "one" razor I use. The jiist of it is - my particular Chronik is hands down the finest shaving device I have ever experienced.... can't speak to others as I have never been able to locate another - and have only heard of one other fella on the forum who posted pics of his black handled Chronik and remarked he liked his as much as I like mine. Other than that.... it seems they are awful uncommon."

Amen.

P.S. "Heinrich Klein, Solingen-Haan in 1932, Wiener Strasse 32 in 1939. Brand names: 'Chronik', 'Heartcrown', 'H.K.'. Razor-blade maker."

Now that you mention it, if he only uses it 1-2 times a year max, how does he know it doesn't need to stropped for 40 uses? Ah, I forget, the chr*'ik acts in mysterious ways.

Amen.

But yeah, confusing a ragged edge for bliss is consistent with the honing disasters on the le grelot project. Very funny stuff.

Nothing shaves like a Chronic! Especially when you are out snipe hunting.

I'm the "Mr Parker" mentioned in the post above. I concur with what he said. My Chronik is ok, nothing special. I haven't bothered using it since the review two years ago.