Thread: Rock Blade Uk???????

Originally Posted by Snake

And that disclaimer would keep me from buying them even if I could afford them. Something not right about making a razor that may not shave and selling it anyway. I'm just saying.

They can get away with it since they call it a Razor/Knife lol

Originally Posted by Snake

I love the look of damascus steel, but all that I read leads me to believe it's not suitable for razors.

If you get the chance to shave with a damascus Zowada you'll change your mind.

Thanks for all the input......yeah the "cheese factor" within their website and the funky disclaimer are telling me to spend my money elsewhere. The gun/knife shows comes into town in a few weeks so maybe I will find some goodies there. Always hit or miss at those things! Besides, razors are identicals to firearms in the sense that....you can never have too many!

Originally Posted by onimaru55

Interesting disclaimer on their eBay ads

Note: Some of our Straight Razors may not be good enough to do the Shave

If you're serious email them & ask where the razors are made. They look no different to the other Pakistani made damascus razors on eBay

If it's not good enough to shave with, then why bother?

Originally Posted by Catrentshaving

They can get away with it since they call it a Razor/Knife lol

To quote a great American...

Them, my friend, are weasel words!

For some reason I think most will know who is attributed this quote.

Originally Posted by onimaru55

If you get the chance to shave with a damascus Zowada you'll change your mind.

I've seen the Zowada blades, and they are all beautiful, if I could I'd have a dozen of them just to hold them. Probably never will, though... that "if you have to ask the price..." thing. They look as expensive as they look beautiful. Since you seem to have hands on experience I have to defer to your assessment, and stand corrected.

I have to admit that I never shaved with a damascus blade. I never meant to give the impression that I did.

When I looked for and read about damascus razors, most of the literature I found indicated that it's not the greatest blade for reasons that all here probably know. I read a few articles that said they were fine, and even found some damascus blades that don't look variegated (!?!?). Yet the vast majority of the articles, including that of the one builder that welded regular steel to the damascus blank for the edge, indicated the material is not best suited for this.

Being the uber noob, I have to assume that it's an chancey proposition at best to get such a blade, and this position is reinforced by at least some manufacturers indicating that their damascus steel razors may be unsuitable for (gasp) shaving.

No disrespect ever intended to damascus blades, their makers or their owners.

And look where this comes from.

Thus far, almost no one has dared to produce a Damascus straight razor with more than 180 layers. In the standard forging process, there is a great risk that different layers of steel are exposed at the very fine edge of the blade, thus creating a "micro saw" on the cutting edge. Our Damascus forgers have solved this problem and are forging the Boker Damascus blades with more than 300 layers of high quality carbon steels. The layers in the center are paralelled for a precisely built cutting edge, which gives a perfect shaving result.

Straight from the Boker website.
Boker offers Straight razor Boker Damascus Buffalo Straight Razor.

Originally Posted by nzFuzzy

I too looked though the pictures quickly and didn't notice any straights at first.

Manah obviously had a better look and found this one:

I bought two recently. One almost identical to the first picture and one similar to the second picture. Neither one is anywhere near shave ready, although the second will cut 'some' hair off my arm. I haven't tried, but I'm sure the first will cut steak if I press hard enough.

I haven't tried honing them yet so I don't know if they will result in a fine edge or in a 'micro-saw'.

The second one seems reasonably well put together: pinning clean, not too tight, blade centered nicely when closed, although the wedge isn't. It is the same thickness from end to end and side to side.

The first one is going to take some work. I am sure the ad said bone (or antler) scales, but it certainly looks and feels like antler textured plastic. The wedge (again - not a wedge) pivots on the single offset pin and the overhang on the blade hits it. While the blade doesn't come right through the scales, it does seat between them so tightly I need both hands to open it. When open, the blade swings quite freely on it's pivot. What I thought was a third pin to prevent the blade falling through the scales, exposing the cutting edge when closed, is a cheap glass jewel.

I do like the blade profile. If it does take a shaving edge I may try to find some real antler to rescale it (I have some from the handle of the lone fork from some carving set. It is about 1/2" too short.) The one similar to the second picture has a radiused end, but with flats cut across the top and bottom of the radius. I may learn to like that, or grind them out to return the end to a single radius rounded end.

They both came with nice leather sheaths/pouches.