Travelling Light: 4 very different razors.
I made a post like this last year when I went on a long road trip. The time has come to get back in the car and put another four or five thousand miles on. (Believe me, if I could avoid this, I would).
Since I'll have my razors with me at all times, they'll be as safe as I will, so I broke out the neat stuff. Better to show friends and relatives, no?
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Same dodgy leather roll -- skinning office chairs is fun! -- four completely different razors from last time.
From left to right ...
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Joseph Elliot, Silver Steel. Pressed horn scales for Philadelphia. My guess is this was made around 1840. It's one of my early, best restoration efforts. The scales at least, I think the blade ultimately ought to be reground, but it shaves as it is, so I'm not going to complain too much.
My love for Joseph Elliot is well documented. This one is a key reason. I freshly honed it up for this trip.
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1910 Zepp, made by Carl Friedrich Ern Jr. for the Zepp Safe Razor Company in New York, he was not only a producer for them, he was also the president of the company! The production run on these was really brief -- only 3-4 years -- probably because the 'hybrid' model just was too unfish/unfowl for the market. The (German silver) scales make it a bit unwieldy when used as a proper straight, but if you lock one of the sides on as a 'safety' guide, the ergonomics are great.
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John Barber, late 1820's. My latest labor of love and the reason I have six billion non-standard 12" long brass rods. (Yay for 2.06mm rod!). I'd honed this one for the previous post about it, but I thought I could get a bit more out of it. I was right. It's a lovely shaver now, and I'll be incredibly happy to use it.
Fun trivia, that spine is huge. How huge? It's as wide as the spine on the two 8/8 razors I've got. The part with John Barber's name on it is a full 1/8th inch tall. That means the actual blade face, the part with the two contact points for the hone, is much smaller than it looks. Not quite 5/8. Like the Joseph Elliot, the blade is also very long. Among the longest razors I've got.
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Carl Viktor Heljestrand, made about 1905 for Magnus Kindal's upscale boutique in Paris, scaled in genuine tortoise shell, the complete set (this one is Mardi -- Tuesday) probably cost about as much as a car. This is an MK 31 model, so about 5/8. I've got a lot of razors, but these Heljestrands are some of the very best to use (and that 'j' is pronounced the same way as Johan or Eyjafjallajökull). They just shave smooth and easy. Of the two I've honed, this one was a bit more work. It had a bit more metal staining though, and some of it was in the bevel.
When I was preparing this batch, I honed three of the four and then shaved with all three, to make sure they were good enough to rely on. I shaved with the Elliot, the Barber and the Heljestrand, randomly choosing each as I went.
Those three were radically different from each other (and the Zepp is different again still). You'd think the Elliot and the Barber would have more in common than they do, but the ergonomics of handling them is completely different. The Elliot just slots onto your fingers with those two notches and the Barber hangs on with jimps as crisp as a new file. The Elliot feels like it's got to be longer than the Barber, but it's actually not. They're almost exactly the same length.
Probably needless to say, the Heljestrand handles very differently, and it's so hollow that it sounds like making popcorn on my face. The Barber is muted but audible and the Elliot is almost completely silent, like some sort of hair-eraser. Why the two wedges are so different, I cannot even begin to guess.
