Great review! That is one fine looking razor!
Note concerning surgical steel: A true examination of the history of the use of steel in medical instruments is outside the scope of this article, but I feel it only correct to make a few points which may help to clear up any misconception in the mind of the reader, most especially where it applies to the usage of the term ‘surgical steel’ relating to the recent Thiers-Issard razor forgings.
Most readers who read or hear the term “surgical grade steel” will automatically think of “stainless steel” where this applies to the medical profession. This is perhaps because of the influence of the American medical system where the term ‘surgical steel’ has come to refer almost exclusively to a group of high grade stainless steel alloys that conform to the many stringent requirements of the operating theatre, amongst which are high strength, ability to take repeated high-temperature sterilization cycles, corrosion-resistance and being of such composition that they provoke neither auto-immune nor rejection responses when/if used as orthopaedic implants within a patient’s body. Over the years this requirement to use nothing but “stainless steel” has spread to almost all areas of the operating theatre, and doctors’ offices, so that almost all implements (scalpels, tweezers, etc.) are now made from this same group of stainless steel alloys.
Here in Europe the situation is slightly different. This is not to imply that European doctors do not use stainless steel, which, of course, they absolutely do, and for the very same, sound medical reasons whenever these apply. But there are also many applications in the medical world for pre-packaged, pre-sterilized, single-use scalpels, blades, needles, tweezers, etc. In these short-duration single-use applications, high quality regular surgical grade steel is more economical and gives equal or better performance. Having said that, I must emphasize that what in this article is termed high-carbon content surgical steel, as found in these most recent blades produced by Thiers-Issard is at the time of this writing being used in other factories elsewhere on the European Continent for the production of the kinds of medical equipment I have mentioned.
In truth, it is only this existing production of medical instruments, demanding this extremely high quality high-carbon content surgical steel, that permits Thiers-Issard to create these latest forgings, as otherwise the economics of trying to obtain that same quality of steel would make this quite impossible. Let me illustrate this for you.
To produce a razor, the factory needs to start out with about 100 grams of steel (3.5 oz) to end up with a finished straight razor blade. An average run of straight-razors at TI requires some 500 kilograms of steel (about 1100 pounds worth) to allow them to produce in the area of 5000 razors. This is really not very much steel at all, being considerably less by weight than would be found in the average mid-sized automobile. Consider then that any company contemplating the purchase of a special mix of steel from a foundry will be looking at a minimum order of at least 20 tons of steel. I hasten to add that even those 20 tons of steel would strike most foundry administrators as too little to be worth their time. Be that as it may, that minimum run of 20 tons of steel would produce on the order of 180,000 razors and would represent approximately twenty years’ production of shaving implements. Of course, paying in advance for a twenty-year supply of steel and then providing storage space for same is beyond the means of most small companies. However, Thiers-Issard has been extremely fortunate in that they have located a foundry that already produces this very high grade of steel for a larger customer who produces medical equipment. TI is then able to ‘piggyback’ their steel order onto that of the larger customer (whose larger volume needs have met the minimum requirements for the foundry to make up the mix). In the past, securing steel of the proper quality had been something of a catch-as-catch-can state of affairs for TI, but having found this new supply source, TI can now arrange to buy job lots of this same high-carbon content surgical steel on an ongoing basis, thus assuring their supplies – and thus a line of top quality straight razors – for a long time to come.