Originally Posted by
mparker762
The goals for this razor were a very thin, light, feathery razor with elegant, flowing lines. There were several places where this played out in the design, namely the thinned shank, the very hollow blade (3/4-4/4 hollow simplex grind), the shoulderless grind, and the gunstock style scales. Additional elements flowed from this, such as the thumb notch , the jimps on tang and tail, and the jimps flowing up onto the blade - all of these improve the amount of control on such a light razor.
Inspirations for this came from several favorites of mine. Waterville fans probably recognized the blade outline immediately - it was based on my first Waterville, this particular example was made in England and has a slightly different feel from my others. The jimps that flow up over the blade was a feature of that same razor, and come in handy when using some inverted holds when shaving the neck area and up under the sideburns. I've got a couple of old swedish composite framebacks where the shank is just the thin sheet of steel that forms the blade - the extra material that forms the spine is only present on the blade section, so the shank is only 1/16" thick. I really love the weight reduction that this provides, and the thin shank means the jimps get a much better bite on your fingers.
The oblique point a variant of something I've seen on several of my razors, and most directly inspired from a Puma I narrowly missed. The use of plain black horn help focus attention on the blade itself, and the light hammer marks emphasize the hand-forged nature of the razor and the contrast of the smooth and hammered surfaces highlight the flowing lines of the blade.
Yeah, I put way too much thought into this razor. But Robert surpassed my dreams.