Steve56
Ask me about shaving naked!
Here’s my experience with the 1996 so far. At this post I have a fully set bevel at 4k, so finishing is just a few more minutes. I’ll post about that later.
First, I assume that the 1996 model is intended to commemorate the founding of the company in 1996, so you’d expect it to be a better razor than maybe some other models. TL;DR: Nah, it’s a pig with lipstick.
One of the first things I noted were the scales. An improvement over the 66/208/Monkey scales to be sure, but also noted that one scale is considerably thicker than the other. This does not bode well for QC, and the edges of the scales are completely unfinished and sharp. Also the toe is well overground as noted above - Jim’s razor looks a lot better. The usual work did remediate that overground toe a little, but it’s still there, which is OK, it will probably shave a little milder because of the upsweep. I also relieved the heel a bit which wasn’t absolutely necessary, but it did seem to improve the appearance of the heel. At $8 shipped I really can’t complain. They’re $10 shipped now, I think there was a coupon going for a while.
I was hoping that the bevel would set without resorting to the mellow 325 DMT, not so unless I wanted to wear out a $90 stone on an $8 razor. So out comes the 325 and away I go. I was seeing considerable edge chipping/mangling from the DMT that I don’t usually see. On most Gold Dollars, I can get a fairly straight edge off a mellow 325. This manglement also didn’t want to clear on the 500 Shapton Glass with King 1k slurry, or the 1k Shapton Glass. It began to straighten up with the 2k, and was gone after the 4k. My pal up in Newport, Mike, cut his King 1k into ‘brown biscuit’ sized chunks and gave me a couple. They’ve been working well to clean swarf and to speed up the coarser stones like the Shapton 500 - King 1k slurry on this stone seemed to cut well.
Curious about the chipping out, I measured the bevel angle after the 1k stone, and it’s right at 18 degrees, maybe 18.1 if you believe in tenths. Most are 19.5-20, so maybe the steel isn’t supporting the edge well at 18 degrees or is less durable? IDK, but I’ve never seen a Gold Dollar edge rip out like this one. Any ideas Slash?
Finishing post later.
First, I assume that the 1996 model is intended to commemorate the founding of the company in 1996, so you’d expect it to be a better razor than maybe some other models. TL;DR: Nah, it’s a pig with lipstick.
One of the first things I noted were the scales. An improvement over the 66/208/Monkey scales to be sure, but also noted that one scale is considerably thicker than the other. This does not bode well for QC, and the edges of the scales are completely unfinished and sharp. Also the toe is well overground as noted above - Jim’s razor looks a lot better. The usual work did remediate that overground toe a little, but it’s still there, which is OK, it will probably shave a little milder because of the upsweep. I also relieved the heel a bit which wasn’t absolutely necessary, but it did seem to improve the appearance of the heel. At $8 shipped I really can’t complain. They’re $10 shipped now, I think there was a coupon going for a while.
I was hoping that the bevel would set without resorting to the mellow 325 DMT, not so unless I wanted to wear out a $90 stone on an $8 razor. So out comes the 325 and away I go. I was seeing considerable edge chipping/mangling from the DMT that I don’t usually see. On most Gold Dollars, I can get a fairly straight edge off a mellow 325. This manglement also didn’t want to clear on the 500 Shapton Glass with King 1k slurry, or the 1k Shapton Glass. It began to straighten up with the 2k, and was gone after the 4k. My pal up in Newport, Mike, cut his King 1k into ‘brown biscuit’ sized chunks and gave me a couple. They’ve been working well to clean swarf and to speed up the coarser stones like the Shapton 500 - King 1k slurry on this stone seemed to cut well.
Curious about the chipping out, I measured the bevel angle after the 1k stone, and it’s right at 18 degrees, maybe 18.1 if you believe in tenths. Most are 19.5-20, so maybe the steel isn’t supporting the edge well at 18 degrees or is less durable? IDK, but I’ve never seen a Gold Dollar edge rip out like this one. Any ideas Slash?
Finishing post later.
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