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Razors That Were Let Downs

So this may have been discussed via threads about offending individual razors, but I thought a thread referencing our collective disappointments would be fun (and decent therapy). So what razor(s) did you have high hopes for, but ultimately has disappointed you? I have a few, but I'm thinking right now one of the contenders for #1 is a WR Case razor. They are usually mid priced on the 'Bay, as there aren't usually tons of them listed. At least not when compared to Genco, Torrey, Geneva, etc. I've wanted a Case razor since I got into SR shaving. I've had numerous Case knivesmthrough the years, and even today they market American made knives (though there is no argument that Case today =/= Case of yesteryear).

Afterr searching the largest auction sight for the better part of 2 years, I recently finally saw one that I thought was a decent deal. No major rust, not even any major patina but it obviously hasnt been polished, the scales looked original, though there were numerous small dings along the bevel that were apparent in pictures. Nothing major, we are talking half the depth of the bevel or ess. I pickee this razor up for about $30 USD shipped. I couldn't believe my luck. Then it arrived. Oh wow, this is a dainty little thing, I thought. It's a 5/8 razor but the tang was tiny. Also the blade just "felt" smaller. It's very light. Oh well no huge issue. On to cleaning and honing. The damage honed out easy enough as it wasn't major. Then on to a progression. The razor is marked "manganese steel." I did some research and true manganese steel (Mangaloy) is unsuitable for razors. After finishing up honing, the first shaves were subpar. I was meticulous in fo,lowing a progression that always works with a quality razor.

Tonight I went back to bevel set. I then increased (slightlty) the number of laps in each step of progression. The results tonight? Better than subpar, but not much beyond mediocre. Fairly, it is close to winter time and winter messes with hydration of shave soap of lather. Still, I had much higher hopes formthis razor.

What is your disappointment?
 
Actually my first shave ready razor is a Solingen, albeit a cheapy. For what I paid I cannot complain, but the steel does seem to be rather soft. Not a huge disappointment.
 
I had a rebranded T-I once (won‘t mention the name on the blade, but the tang was clearly stamped Thiers Issard). Bevel was so wonky you could get motion sickness by looking at it and moving it back and forth🤢🤮. What a mess….
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
My first SR was my biggest disappointment. Being in the Philippines at the time, I didn't have much to choose from. I had yet to discover B&B.

Not wanting to spend a lot on something I knew nothing about, I searched high and low. Eventually I settled on a lovely looking new stainless steel ⅝ SR with timber scales on AliExpress. The $5 price including shipping was within my budget. I also purchased a 6k/10k natural whetstone ($3) and $2 "leather" 45mm wide strop.

After about a week of trying to get it sharp enough to shave and failing, I discovered B&B. It was then that I found out my pride and joy SR was really just a RSO.
 
The very first straight razors were Bengalls that I purchased from Gumtree - a classified ad site. I planned to get them honed. I sent them away to a hone meister in Sydney whom I found here on B&B. He advised me that they were full of black rust and that they would never shave again. They all went in the bin.
 
I had a wonderedge in amazing condition. But the scales broke in shipping and the blade was warped ;(

Also had an American razor that couldn't take an edge past 10k or so. Think it just jad a bad heat treatment though.

Side note, razors that have never disappointed me are Pumas and heljestrands
 
The first razor I ever bought off eBay (I believe it’s made by T-I) had scales that were so warped and loose that it’s dangerous to use. I had to bend them to the side to get it to close. More than once the blade has flopped shut a dinged the edge on the scales. Stropping and honing is a test of nerves.

It’s a good shaver, but it badly needs new scales.
 
Thiers Issard has disappointed me twice. A new purchase came in with plastic molded scales (faux tortoise) that still had flash hanging off, and very loose pivot pin. Having an understanding of plastic molding, I quickly removed the flash and tightened the pin. Fortunately, the end result was good. But this one would never have passed a Quality Control audit.

My second TI was a barely used vintage blade with geometry problems. I had to send it out for correction, understanding at that point why it was barely used.

So TI is off my list. Surprisingly, their sister company Le Grelot puts out razors of fantastic shave ready quality at a lower price - go figure!
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
It was about my third or fourth Bengall. I found it on eBay. Looked great in the photos. When it arrived I found that it had been "heat treated" to where most of the blade was blue/orange. Tried honing it but the steel was just too soft.

Fortunately the vendor gave me a full refund. I kept the scales and binned the blade.
 
It was about my third or fourth Bengall. I found it on eBay. Looked great in the photos. When it arrived I found that it had been "heat treated" to where most of the blade was blue/orange. Tried honing it but the steel was just too soft.

Fortunately the vendor gave me a full refund. I kept the scales and binned the blade.
That's a bummer, but I'm glad the vendor made it right. I'm wary of high gloss polishes of vintage razors for this very reason. I have a Joseph Elliot razor that I believe had its tempering/heat treatment slightly altered with a belt grinder. The bevel had a wonky S shaped profile where half the razor smiled and the other half frowned. There were course grind marks near the bevel that obviously weren't from a hone, but from a power tool. I honed on that thing for hours trying to straighten it out. I mostly did, actually, but I believe it's softer than a razor should be (which explains why I was able to correct that much of a geometry issue with a few hours and not days of honing). I can get it to take an edge, and it shaves ok the first shave or two. But it does go downhill from there. Stropping doesn't freshen the edge any after shave 5 or 6, and it honestly feels like shaving with broken shell at that point.

It's a bit of a bummer, but I got that razor in an 8 razor lot that I bought for a steal. There are other razors in that lot that are easily worth what I paid for the whole thing.
 
The first razor I ever bought off eBay (I believe it’s made by T-I) had scales that were so warped and loose that it’s dangerous to use. I had to bend them to the side to get it to close. More than once the blade has flopped shut a dinged the edge on the scales. Stropping and honing is a test of nerves.

It’s a good shaver, but it badly needs new scales.
Get a cheap $25 lot of 4 on ebay, and cannibalize the scales
That's a bummer, but I'm glad the vendor made it right. I'm wary of high gloss polishes of vintage razors for this very reason. I have a Joseph Elliot razor that I believe had its tempering/heat treatment slightly altered with a belt grinder. The bevel had a wonky S shaped profile where half the razor smiled and the other half frowned. There were course grind marks near the bevel that obviously weren't from a hone, but from a power tool. I honed on that thing for hours trying to straighten it out. I mostly did, actually, but I believe it's softer than a razor should be (which explains why I was able to correct that much of a geometry issue with a few hours and not days of honing). I can get it to take an edge, and it shaves ok the first shave or two. But it does go downhill from there. Stropping doesn't freshen the edge any after shave 5 or 6, and it honestly feels like shaving with broken shell at that point.

It's a bit of a bummer, but I got that razor in an 8 razor lot that I bought for a steal. There are other razors in that lot that are easily worth what I paid for the whole thing.
Makes me think, there's a safety element to purchasing straights with etches and or gold wash on the face - you know it wasn't heavily polished to messing with the heat treatment or the face etching would have been removed..

That said, I have to wonder how seriously you need to polish a razor to reach temperature where you're screwing with the heat treatment?

My biggest let down so far has been a Heljestrand which I like fine enough but has required a lot of work on it's heel which was quite uneven. Only used it a couple times, found I need to do yet more work on it. I think I'll appreciate it after I get the heel rectified
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
....
That said, I have to wonder how seriously you need to polish a razor to reach temperature where you're screwing with the heat treatment?
....
Not much. About 200°C is high enough to start deteriorating the steel qualities. That temperature can be very quickly reach (sometimes less than a second) with the steel thicknesses we play with.
 

Slash McCoy

I freehand dog rockets
My first razor was a let-down, but the problem was I was too stubborn to give up on it for several years. It was a Dovo "Best Quality" that razor of the ironic name. Brand new, factory sharp, said the guy behind the counter at the knife shop. Sorry, no, we do not sell leather goods so no "strap" here. Just use an old belt. That should have been a warning bell, but of course I didn't know any better.

I bought it anyway. Couldn't shave. I could scrape, but not shave. This was pre-internet and I had no learning resources. I decided I could definitely get it sharper, since my pocketknife would shave better than the razor. I tried "sharpening" the razor on the stones I used for my knives. I did have a clue and I did use the spine as the honing angle guide, and I did get it a little sharper, but shaving, or I should say scraping, was still torture.

About a year later I was in Mexico and found a tremendous slab of a stone in a hardware store, very glassy, like a translucent arkie. I bought it and it was definitely waaaaaay finer than my knife stones. I wailed on it for months, every single day, without getting the edge I thought I should be getting. I eventually figured out that (1) I was riding the shoulder, and (2) the razor had more twist in it than Chubby Checker. I still would not give up on it.

Then, in a junk/antique shop, I found a nice vintage, a Boker if I remember correctly, that had something of an edge on it. The Dovo went for a long nap. I was able to maintain and even improve the vintage razor's edge on the Mexican stone, and the Illinois strop that I had finally acquired. Now I felt it. I knew for a fact that it wasn't me, it was the razor all along, and I had been wasting my time and skin cells on a *** that carried a famous brand name.

Not long after, I bought another "Best" and same result, but I knew to quit while I was ahead. After I found the internet and BBS boards and usenet, I learned much of the basics that I was grasping for but that eluded my random spasms of experimentation, trial and error. Then I found B&B, and SRP. Shortly thereafter I scored a "Col. Conk" rebranded Dovo. Same old story.

So, three lemons in a row were Dovo. By this time I had tossed the first one. I figured out how to hone the other two twisted sister Dovos, and got them sort of working. Now, I am pretty sure I could take any of those razors and make ugly but efficient shavers out of them, but at the time, they let me down badly. I have had great success in buying the middle tier Dovo's, like the Bismarck, but I won't touch a "Best" ever again. Yeah I have honed a lot of wonky GDs but those three Dovos were worse.

Since then I have bought an awful lot of razors, and many were not what they seemed in their fleabay pics. Hey, sometimes you get the alligator, sometimes the gator gets you. I don't lose any sleep over them, though, because I have also found some real gems.
 
My first razor was a let-down, but the problem was I was too stubborn to give up on it for several years. It was a Dovo "Best Quality" that razor of the ironic name. Brand new, factory sharp, said the guy behind the counter at the knife shop. Sorry, no, we do not sell leather goods so no "strap" here. Just use an old belt. That should have been a warning bell, but of course I didn't know any better.

I bought it anyway. Couldn't shave. I could scrape, but not shave. This was pre-internet and I had no learning resources. I decided I could definitely get it sharper, since my pocketknife would shave better than the razor. I tried "sharpening" the razor on the stones I used for my knives. I did have a clue and I did use the spine as the honing angle guide, and I did get it a little sharper, but shaving, or I should say scraping, was still torture.

About a year later I was in Mexico and found a tremendous slab of a stone in a hardware store, very glassy, like a translucent arkie. I bought it and it was definitely waaaaaay finer than my knife stones. I wailed on it for months, every single day, without getting the edge I thought I should be getting. I eventually figured out that (1) I was riding the shoulder, and (2) the razor had more twist in it than Chubby Checker. I still would not give up on it.

Then, in a junk/antique shop, I found a nice vintage, a Boker if I remember correctly, that had something of an edge on it. The Dovo went for a long nap. I was able to maintain and even improve the vintage razor's edge on the Mexican stone, and the Illinois strop that I had finally acquired. Now I felt it. I knew for a fact that it wasn't me, it was the razor all along, and I had been wasting my time and skin cells on a *** that carried a famous brand name.

Not long after, I bought another "Best" and same result, but I knew to quit while I was ahead. After I found the internet and BBS boards and usenet, I learned much of the basics that I was grasping for but that eluded my random spasms of experimentation, trial and error. Then I found B&B, and SRP. Shortly thereafter I scored a "Col. Conk" rebranded Dovo. Same old story.

So, three lemons in a row were Dovo. By this time I had tossed the first one. I figured out how to hone the other two twisted sister Dovos, and got them sort of working. Now, I am pretty sure I could take any of those razors and make ugly but efficient shavers out of them, but at the time, they let me down badly. I have had great success in buying the middle tier Dovo's, like the Bismarck, but I won't touch a "Best" ever again. Yeah I have honed a lot of wonky GDs but those three Dovos were worse.

Since then I have bought an awful lot of razors, and many were not what they seemed in their fleabay pics. Hey, sometimes you get the alligator, sometimes the gator gets you. I don't lose any sleep over them, though, because I have also found some real gems.
This is just my impression and I have no facts to support it. But I believe that Dovo and Thiers Issard are now mass producers of razors and the craftsmanship is likely gone. I stay away from them. There are lots of smaller custom makers that I respect. And it seems that Ralf Aust makes a good razor. But I have herd that even some wacker razors come through with problems.

I believe a razor requires a certain degree of craftsmanship that may be impossible (or at least very difficult) to attain in a mass production environment.
 
I bought a little Söderén on ebay a while back, not going to name the seller because he has a good reputation and moves a lot of razors. I could tell from the photos that it had seen a buffer wheel (most of his razors have been buffed but he does a good job, I think). Anyway, it is a neat little razor and I haven't seen another quite like it so I bought it. Once I had it in hand, I could see that it had a lot of deep scratches that hadn't really been sanded out. That's weird, I thought. So I started working on it with w/d and the reason became apparent pretty quickly. It's really hard steel. Stupid hard. The kind of steel that gives Swedish razors the legendary reputation they have (even though most of them are just a little harder than average). Basically you could take a fresh piece of coarse sandpaper and in about 10 strokes it would go from cutting to just sort of polishing. Pretty sure that the selller ground off the worst of the pitting, tried to smooth out the resulting scratches, and just gave up and made it shiny. Not that I can really blame him. I put as much time and effort into it as I was willing to, and it's acceptable now, not great, but it will do.

Second problem, it was sold as shave ready, and again, this guy has a reputation around here for actually knowing how to hone. And, it was-- for the front two-thirds of the blade. The heel third was not. And again, I understand why--it's stupid hard, and there's a tiny warp on the non-show side at the heel that required a little bit of a roll--on a normal razor it would have added a few extra minutes-- on this one it added a lot of time. If I had to guess, I'd say that honing overall took about 3 times longer than normal on each grit. And I'm still working my way to getting a natural finish on it that I like. I can get it plenty keen on diamond paste, so I know it's possible. But it just takes forever to fully refine the edge.

So, overall no big deal, it's a good learning experience and I still really like the razor. But the price I paid was reasonable for a razor that had been restored and honed--which it wasn't, fully, and that annoys me still. But, again, no big deal-- ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances.

before and after pics:
20220613_203540.jpg
20220901_061825.jpg
 
Ralf Austs have been disappointments. I have had two of them: 6/8 and 5/8 inch stainless steel blade. Both of them had the blade slightly bent sideways and I couldn't sharpen them properly because of that (using a flat stone, at least). I possessed one razor at a time, got disappointed, got full refund and sent it back to the shop which contacted the import company. Then the same thing with another slightly different Ralf Aust razor.

While getting disappointed in Ralf Austs and sending them back and forth I have had a really nice Böker Elite Carbon 3.0 straight razor which has always been trustworthy.
 
I’ve been relatively lucky. My only sad eBay story is a Joseph Rogers that turned out to have a crack in the blade near the heel. The seller offered to refund 1/3 of the price (I’d only paid about $30). I took the offer, honed it up, and its been in my kitchen for 2 years where I use it to score sourdough bread.

My only letdown has been a Fili 14 DT. I can’t complain about the price, it had a small chip in the edge so I got it for about 1/3 of what user grade Fili 14s usually cost. I honed it up just fine, but… it just doesn’t move me the way I had expected based on all the comments I have read on B&B. Its a very decent razor, it’s a good value due to the price I paid, but I far prefer my Fili 13 Novodur as well as a number of my other razors that are 6/8-7/8 hollows.
 
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