Paying it Forward and the cost incurred.
I'll start off by saying this: I lent out a razor and half way through the shave, the loanee dropped and broke the blade on m SFK stamped Wapi.....Paying it forward: the concept of asking the beneficiary of a good deed to repay it to others instead of to the original benefactor.My buddy Matt (Ironsidegnr) went to Italy for a tour with the Royal Canadian Air Force in support of the Libya mission.
While there, he got into shaving with a straight razor. Returning home, he started to mention how nice of a shave it was. I ignored him. After a while, he started doing light restorations and custom scale work; mostly simple wood work, traditional designs, but solidly built and quality work. Matt lent me a Morley and Sons Clover brand razor that provided me with my first, eye-opening, shaving experience. The blade stayed in my hands for about a month before I sourced my very own razor.
This whole time I made every effort to treat it as my own, maintain it and clean it thoroughly after every use; I never put it away wet. I suppose Matt was lucky to have lent something to someone like me, who takes pride in their posessions and treats them as such. I however was not so lucky with my experience in getting someone interested in shaving. By not fault of the individual I lent the razor to, other than, maybe, a little complacency and a rushed approach to wanting to get into SR shaving.
Needless to say, one of my favourite razors, a stamped, NOS, SFK Wapienica is ruined and I'm left stuck between a rock and a hard place. Part of me just wants the money it cost me to source this. I ordered it from a guy in Bulgaria and paid $60 which included shipping. The other part of me wants to have the razor replaced. These seem to be few and far between these days and the ones I have seen in NOS (can't find any right now) are fetching, in cases, a larger sum of money than what it cost me to purchase one.
Everything set aside, the guy I lent the razor to had a good shave out of the blade and doesn't want to give up trying. The next razor I lend him will be one I consider a 'junker', you know, an e-bay special! He'll get something that I shave with in my rotation that I've put an awesome edge on but won't cost me an arm and a leg to replace!