Thread: Crescent City Razors News for September 2020

I have had a few Gold Dollar and Double Arrow razors in the past that would not lay flat on the hone which would prevent them from being honed properly. Once the problem was fixed with a little grinding and they were properly honed they are pretty good shaving razors and are good inexpensive candidates for new straight razor shavers.

Good luck and much success!

Originally Posted by DoughBoy68

I have had a few Gold Dollar and Double Arrow razors in the past that would not lay flat on the hone which would prevent them from being honed properly. Once the problem was fixed with a little grinding and they were properly honed they are pretty good shaving razors and are good inexpensive candidates for new straight razor shavers.

Good luck and much success!

They are getting better, actually. Or maybe I should say not as bad as before. Try a new P81 some time. It is easier to get the average P81 ready to use than any of the three entry level Dovos I have tried.

I well remember the bad ol days when a Dremel was your most important Gold Dollar honing tool. I was buying 1/2" sanding drums by the sack on ebay. Oh, those pesky stabilizers!

I don't know what happened yesterday evening. Four orders in one day. Do I HAVE to raise my prices again? It would be a shame. Maybe I should take down my fleabay listings and get a couple hundred razors honed before I put them back up again. Ideally I would like to move maybe 3 or 4 razors a week, TBH. I got a lot of other things to do besides razors and I don't want this to be like a job. My www.crescentcityrazors.com website only generates a couple of sales a week at most. It's those Ebayers who are driving me crazy. A couple weeks ago I only had one order for the week and I was wondering if I should drop my prices. Three or four razors a week, one or two runs to the post office, works out about right for me. Keeps it kinda fun. But then I get comfortable and suddenly I have to ship 20 razors in a week and it turns into WORK! I know some of you guys who hone or restore or repair a dozen razors a day will laugh at that, but I am not trying to make a living from it and this isn't meant to be a job for me.

I think I can multitask a little, though. Mrs Monster kindly pointed out that while I am trading, I don't have to keep my eyes glued to the screen every second, and why don't I hone razors while I am between sending buy or sell orders to the broker? I can just glance at my charts every few laps and get some razors honed while I make (or lose) money on my stocks and futures and stuff. Yeah I been branching into futures but that's another thing. Anyway so maybe I can get an extra dozen razors honed during my trading hours every week. That would be cool. Now if Mrs. Monster will buy us a self driving Tesla, I can hone on the way to the post office. hone, strop, sanitize, pack, and label! Someone remind me I owe Elon Musk a Gold Dollar for making that possible. Come to think of it, now that I have air conditioning on the boat, I suppose I could put a honing kit together for the boat and hone a few while I am retreating from the domestic untranquility of me and Mrs Monster being cooped up in the house and her unable to go to One Shell Square for work. I plan on spending a night or two every week on the boat (burglars, you just guess which nights if you want a closeup view down the bore of a repro 1858 Remington .44) so I can hone up a few, then, while I am watching all the super important stuff on youtube or enjoying an oldfashioned with my nabes at the marina. Anyway I need to either slow down sales or increase output, one or the other. And I will confess to some small amount of greed, so...

Just had a long and excruciating conversation with my prospective horn scale supplier. I just can't get him to grasp the concept of a wedge instead of a flat spacer. I take pics, blow them up and annotate them with text and arrows and he still doesn't get it, nor why it is a bad thing for scales to be an inch too long. So, next week I will bite the bullet and make some bone scales and wedges. No, none for sale. They go on my razors. I may offer some bone slabs for sale when the next shipment arrives. I know some of you here will be wanting some camel bone when you see pics of the finished scales. That stuff really does make attractive scales.

I have given up on the prefab horn scales. The guy in India that I have been negotiating with simply doesn't get it. One problem is he is absolutely clearly not familiar with straight razors. He is pretty good at making a piece of horn look like razor scales, but not the design and dimensions required for a good fit to a standard straight razor. I thought I was making some progress in teaching him, when he showed me pics of a set with an actual wedge, but he pinned my sample razor that I sent him between the scales and the tips are almost a half inch too long and the scales do not curve enough to ensure that the blade does not protrude through the bottom of the scales. No biggie... I can work with him on that, right? His design is improving, right? But we started talking about price, and apparently scales that can actually be pinned to a razor are "custom" and "more difficult", and he wants to charge more than his list price. So I told him to get lost, I am done with him. His listed price was incredibly low which was one reason I thought buying prefab horn scales might work out really well. I wasted a lot of time, trying to teach him to make a product that is actually useful, to his as well as my benefit. Now, if he precisely duplicates the sample he made, he can ALMOST make razor scales that can actually be used. So for me, no more Indian suppliers for finished or partly finished products or components. This has been quite frustrating and I am actually relieved now that it is no longer in the works.

On the other front, I have another shipment of camel bone arriving today. Looking forward to seeing it and comparing it to the other shipment. I am probably not trading today, as I almost never sell short and the market is in decline this morning. I have been trading only NASDAQ futures and so I need a general up trending market in order to make decent money. BUT today is a brew day as my beer is running low. Maybe I will have some time to spend in the shop today but probably tomorrow I will rough out some camel bone scales and maybe do some grinding on one of the Herder blades as well as a few of the unbranded GD blanks. I still have to give the Herder blanks a file test but I am thinking that they are not yet heat treated so some time soon I will devote a full day to my first HT session with my new electric kiln and the 5 gallon bucket of Park 50 that has been taking up space for the last two years, unopened. Not sure if I will be selling the Herders or not. If not, good opportunity for someone else. $10 for a quality forged blank and a set of finished bone scales is a pretty good start at an inexpensive razor that should sell for Dovo BQ prices. Too bad they are not already Solingen stamped, huh?

I give you a huge thumbs up for your ambition, resourcefulness and capitalistic spirit. However, those all sound like typical problems when dealing with Chinese and Indian importers.

Originally Posted by DVW

I give you a huge thumbs up for your ambition, resourcefulness and capitalistic spirit. However, those all sound like typical problems when dealing with Chinese and Indian importers.

Very typical.

... and, they are HERE, my second 100pc shipment of camel bone. So that's two Indian sellers who can furnish a product to meet the buyer's needs, and conduct business properly and honestly. Compared to the horn guy who can do neither and is more interested in squeezing every cent out of a deal than in outperforming other vendors with good product and good service. Okay, I'm done ranting about the horn guy. Loving the bone. I will be making some scales very very soon.

I made some scales in horn and bone. At the time I had 2 dogs. And the both of them had their noses up the minute you step in the house(sanding and polishing done in outdoor shed). And don't put a pair down within reach. They will chew em up. Don't ask me how I know.

Originally Posted by Bill31521

I made some scales in horn and bone. At the time I had 2 dogs. And the both of them had their noses up the minute you step in the house(sanding and polishing done in outdoor shed). And don't put a pair down within reach. They will chew em up. Don't ask me how I know.

LOL I feel your pain! Actually, no I don't cause that is funny as hell!

Gold Monkey 666 razors are back in stock. Been so busy I haven't been honing any, and I got behind. Right now I think I am out of P81 but I will hone up a few tomorrow.