Although they have gone up in price considerably of late, the $25-$50 Wapienica is a great razor.
I used a modified 66 yesterday. A close, uneventful shave happened.Oh yes more than a few these was £1.75 from ebay called a Gold Dollar 66, and they are fantastic to use once you get them sorted out.
This is how they come to you
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And this is how they end up after they have been modified
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You would probably find they are lesser known brand names, made in the same factory as the expensive, hyped brands. A lot of great bargain razors are found this way.I have a few cheap ebay purchases (under €20) that are fantastic shavers and hold an incredible edge. These are mostly Solingen razors by presumably small companies as information on them is hard to find.
That is what I'm leaning towards given the edge these razors take. I originally bought them as beaters to practice honing and to be honest, they are among my best shavers.You would probably find they are lesser known brand names, made in the same factory as the expensive, hyped brands. A lot of great bargain razors are found this way.
You would probably find they are lesser known brand names, made in the same factory as the expensive, hyped brands. A lot of great bargain razors are found this way.
I had a DD Goldedge and another razor called a Gold Bug, and they were exactly the same blade. The scales on the DD were nicer, but in a blind test you would never know one from the other by shaving.The factory that made Dorko straights made a number of other brands. They would have used the same steel blades in each one, just different stamps and scales.
Most quality razors shave well.
It is 99% about the edge.
I chuckle when people say something like "those are great shavers"
You can get a great or bad shave from anything, depends on how it is honed
It's my understanding that much of the grinding and polishing was done by homeworkers in Solingen. So the same person would have ground blades for several different companies, to their specs. Also, the number of forges dropped off precipitously in the first half of the 20th century. Solingen blades tend to be very consistent within a certain timeframe. It's just a matter of finding the grind and blade profile you like; it will be very similar across different brands.
Here's a thread where it's discussed, the screencap is a book from around the turn of the 20th century.Any proof for this?
This is the first time I hear this and I grew up less than 60 km (37 mi) from Solingen.
There is actually a museum in Wuppertal where people can see how knives were ground at the beginning of the industrial age.
Check out this video: Wipperkotten 1961 | Förderverein Schleiferei Wipperkotten e.V. - https://schleiferei-wipperkotten.de/video-upload/wipperkotten-1961
The grinding wheels were originally driven by water and I doubt that the average razor maker had that kind of arrangement at home.
Rather there was a multitude of ‘manufacturies’ (workshops) where people produced knives and razors from blanks, sometimes under their own name and sometimes for larger companies, but they were nothing like ‘homeworkers’.
The idea that workers picked up razor blanks in the factory and then ground them at home is preposterous.
One of the reasons that Solingen razors became so successful is that they developed in the late 19th century the ‘Hexe’ (pictured below) that allowed small factories to grind uniform, symmetrically ground, full hollow razor blades. While we may feel attracted to hand-made razors, it was this kind of mechanisation that allowed workshops to consistently turn out high quality razors.
One of the persons who still owns a ‘Hexe’ is Ralf Aust and he grinds his razors on it.
And you may have guessed - not in his home either.
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Some of these workshops became renown factories, like the C. Friedr. Ern factory below, and I just do not see armies of workers trudging in though the main door delivering the razors they had ground at home.
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One of the few (if not the last) companies that produces razor blanks is Hugo Herkenrath, who turns out most blanks for razor knives ground in Germany.
Heat treatment and grinding is then done by some small (Aust, Wacker, Böker) and not so small (Dovo) companies.
B.