Wow Jimmy, that "Kissing Crane" reference just bought back a blast from the past for me. Until reading your post, I hadn't heard that name in many years.

Many years ago when I was going to school in rural Mississippi, boys openly carried and traded pocket knives, and nobody gave it a second thought. Between classes, one of the trading games that we'd play was called "knife dropping." The way it worked was that each kid had a folding pocket knife hidden in his hand, and we'd randomly pair up at a table. On a count of three, we'd each drop the knife in our hand on the table, executing a sight-unseen "trade" with the kid directly across from us. Kind of like a grab bag at Christmas, with pocket knives. If you got stuck with junk, you'd unload it at the next knife drop and maybe get something better. Holding out on quality pieces was the mark of a coward.

This was before imported junk was common. Vintage Case, Buck, and Schrade were common stuff. Anything marked Solingen was prized. The two brands I remember being especially highly prized were "German Eye" and "Kissing Crane". I snagged a Kissing Crane at one knife drop, and it was the best pocket knife I ever had. Cleaned many a squirrel with it during squirrel season, it really took and held an edge.

Pardon the detour, but I figure that any razor from the same maker as Kissing Crane is as good as that knife, and that would be good indeed. My first straight was a Dovo, because all I knew at the time was that anything steel made in Solingen didn't suck.