Thread: Something a little Aust of the ordinary...

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

+1 I like Aust, and what Revisors I've had, but IME the two Wackers I've had were equal with any other razor, and better than many. Why the OP feels it necessary to bash a vendor in a post showing a pair of another vendor's razors is beyond my limited imagination ....... unless there is an agenda going on in the background.

Well, hello, Jimmy! Neither Wacker nor any of the others are vendors. They are manufacturers. And I did not bash Wacker, I relayed my personal experience with several of their razors. Which was not good, mildly put. Here is a concrete example, pertinent to the type of razor in question:



As you can see, all three were made from the same blank. However, if you take a close look at the tang, you will see that the Wacker's tang is thinner than the two others. It may not look like much of a difference (in reality, it really is not), but it made stropping, honing, and handling this razor very cumbersome. You know that I am not prone to overly negative comments on individual items, let alone product ranges, and even less an entire manufacture. But this razor was a massive disappointment, and the others were not much better. Add to that issues with quality control so bad that two vendors I know stopped carrying them, and a pattern emerges.

Please do not forget that what you guys in the US are getting has typically been screened by your local vendors. Over here, we are more likely to get these razors straight from the source, or from vendors who, since we are less litigious society, are less prone to screening.

So, no agenda, hidden or otherwise, just a bit of first hand experience.

This is all very interesting, for me at least, and seems also related to the "Filarmonica" thread in the Razor forum.

Provided all these blanks were forged by Herkenrath, and I believe they were, were any changes made at the behest of certain "customers?" It seems there certainly could have been.
I imagine that the forge owned the tooling, but this is not necessarily so, as customers could contract to have tooling made to their own specs, and retain ownership. Regardless of who held title to the dies, I wonder if customers could specify different alloys for a production run, if they so desired. This could account for differences in "personalities" of certain razors, and how would we ever know? This could remain hidden in production records forever!
Further, I doubt that Herkenrath had any legal protection for the numbers "13," 14" etc.. And if not, others could be free to use these numbers for their blanks. I see a number of variations in the application of the number on #14 blanks, but that could be integral to the manufacturer's stamp on the tang. Who really knows?

So, since Robin is close, interested and seems to have access, perhaps our questions could finally be answered...

Originally Posted by Druid

Provided all these blanks were forged by Herkenrath, and I believe they were, were any changes made at the behest of certain "customers?" It seems there certainly could have been.

Yes, they could be, but they were not. Most certainly not in the past two decades, when razors were collector's items. Almost the whole current production is processed by Dovo. The rest is sold piecemeal to the small manufactures.

As an aside, there were more than a hundred drop forges in the heyday of Solingen razor production. However, steels were far and few between. I asked an old craftsman, who had been in business for more than 60 years. He said that, basically, the same steel was used by all of them.

Interestingly, apparently no one has bothered to have old blades analysed. It would be easy enough to do. And yield some interesting results, I am sure.

As far as the #14 blades are concerned, I honestly cannot be bothered any more. You guys are entitled to your own opinions, and if they make you happy, that is great, is it not? In the meantime, I shall stick with what I have been told by people who were actually around.

Very nice Aust's! I believe they will be selling a lot of those & they are beautiful shoulderless.

Originally Posted by BobH

Personal preference for me would be upper and lower jimping.

I agree wholeheartedly ! Especially as Ralf Aust tends to continue the gimps on the back of his razors, I like this a lot.

Originally Posted by UKRob

...
How do you reconcile these statements? Given that they come from the same factory made blanks then the difference is down to grind and finish - all done by hand. I cannot comment on the quality of Aust or Revisor - what I can say is that my Wacker Chevalier is beyond reproach - as is my Dovo Bergischer Lowe.

Slightly off topic I guess, but just my 2c worth of experience with the Dovo B-L - mine never gave me a decent shave, grind was weird - GD weird. I could have done some restoration honing on it I guess, but I found that an unacceptable option for a razor of that price. I ended up giving it away to someone with more patience than I had.

James.

Fancy spines, love the look...