Personally I bow to thinness/concavity of razors, for flexibility associated thereof to the steel and the acuity of bevel angle coming at the beard. Swedish early-20th-c 'framebacks' are impossibly thin, terrific acute bevels, but alas also quite stiff. It would be fair to say this stuff peaked from roughly the late Victorian Era to just before WWII and has not returned to that level since. I don't find normal run of the mill Golden Age str8s better or worse than the modern stuff if their grinds are the same.
What's detailed below was posted to a now-defunct forum about 2-3 years prior. But I'll detail for you here something that (in another time before straight razor production in the EU really became constantly backlogged) Thiers-Issard dared to make which was, in my lifetime, anyway, what I consider the high-watermark of (modern) straight razor production. I think it is very little known at all.
I once knew a formerly-important person at TI (not there anymore, along with many others, dispatched @ roughly the time TI began producing "OEM" razors for a well-known retail brand en masse, and made their business decision to shed this costly payroll and make razors without pissing contests for thinness).
The fellow, as a tinkerer and empowered there with some creative control of production and as both a designer and producer alike, began a process for grinding that I colloquially referred to as 'the negative bevel' razor. Thiers didn't do this long, roughly late '07/early '08 until just before 2012, and only did so on their 5/8" and 6/8" extra-hollow-ground model from what I was told by this former employee, and it was mostly just before the changeover to the "C135" steel and mostly the 5/8" model (but indeed, some of them were made with the new C135 stuff and the old, and in both 5/8 and 6/8, so u may have one!)
Obviously, a razor cannot have a bevel angle that's a negative number-"negative bevel" written here just means a razor which had a bevel angle that would be otherwise too acute for the spine-to-bevel angle geometry to possibly achieve, due to the spine being in the way of the honing/grinding medium.
As a matter of course I've honed every razor we've sold barring the hyper collectible or fragile-spine-decor things. In so doing at the onset of discovery of this "TI Negative Bevel Era", I began seeing a razor on the benchstone developing what looked like a 'secondary' bevel (this means the final angle more obtuse than the rest of the bevel plane) as I made laps on the coticule. How could this be?, I wondered, as I had both spine and edge flush to stone...something had to be very wrong indeed with this razor. So, I began the process of smoke signals to summon the elusive _____ ____ at TI.
_____ ____ extolled "No! Don't hone this razor!!!" (too late for that one), and explained to me that, quite remarkably, the razor's final processes of grinding were all done with the razor's spine WITHIN the plane of the grinding, as opposed to UPON it (or, in some artisanal cases, ABOVE the plane via tape/etc) as would be normal, intentionally to achieve maximum bevel acuity. They did this by free hand, if you can believe that. I can't imagine the skill it would take to do so and have a normal looking bevel. Said mostly it was with long belts and the razor aside these mediums, but some with very narrow wheels which wouldn't reach the spine were they upon the edge. This resulted in the razor that, upon my forearm cutting hair as high above the skin as I can muster via honing as the benchmark used here along with bringing a strand of the wife's down to the blade, cut hair upon me as no other ever has before or since....well, not the one I "messed" up by bringing it back to normal geometry, of course, but the next piece of such (5/8" pre-C135) that I took home...I still have that razor, and have never honed it, and it does not shave like anything else. In fact it is the only razor I own which I could fairly say I've yet to get anything but a spectacular result from.
How much longer can my specimen work like this? I dunno. _____ ____ told me that these 'negative bevel' pcs should be only touched up via their own wood-mounted strop with paste for as long as possible, because doing this would not bring the bevel back to normal, but could be kept as such for 2-3 years of daily use, and upon the first time you tried to hone on a regular stone/hone with spine and edge flush you'd start seeing the normal bevel angle popping up right at the edge and then it would be come just another normal well ground hollow French blade.
When I'd detailed this story on the other now-defunct forum a few years back, quite remarkably a seasoned hand who e-hung-out there had actually read of this notion in an old Sheffield text for grinders (he must be one hell of a researcher). The mystery person @ TI confirmed this to me as being their genesis, or at least having first got the idea there if not the manner of production.
Anyone out there have a 'negative bevel' TI (~2008-late 2011, extra hollow model 5/8 and 6/8 only), or one of the original of such from Sheffield? Anyone go to hone their TI or old Sheffield razor and start seeing a secondary bevel forming at the tip of the bevel planes while their confirmed-flat stone had both spine and edge flush upon it?
What's detailed below was posted to a now-defunct forum about 2-3 years prior. But I'll detail for you here something that (in another time before straight razor production in the EU really became constantly backlogged) Thiers-Issard dared to make which was, in my lifetime, anyway, what I consider the high-watermark of (modern) straight razor production. I think it is very little known at all.
I once knew a formerly-important person at TI (not there anymore, along with many others, dispatched @ roughly the time TI began producing "OEM" razors for a well-known retail brand en masse, and made their business decision to shed this costly payroll and make razors without pissing contests for thinness).
The fellow, as a tinkerer and empowered there with some creative control of production and as both a designer and producer alike, began a process for grinding that I colloquially referred to as 'the negative bevel' razor. Thiers didn't do this long, roughly late '07/early '08 until just before 2012, and only did so on their 5/8" and 6/8" extra-hollow-ground model from what I was told by this former employee, and it was mostly just before the changeover to the "C135" steel and mostly the 5/8" model (but indeed, some of them were made with the new C135 stuff and the old, and in both 5/8 and 6/8, so u may have one!)
Obviously, a razor cannot have a bevel angle that's a negative number-"negative bevel" written here just means a razor which had a bevel angle that would be otherwise too acute for the spine-to-bevel angle geometry to possibly achieve, due to the spine being in the way of the honing/grinding medium.
As a matter of course I've honed every razor we've sold barring the hyper collectible or fragile-spine-decor things. In so doing at the onset of discovery of this "TI Negative Bevel Era", I began seeing a razor on the benchstone developing what looked like a 'secondary' bevel (this means the final angle more obtuse than the rest of the bevel plane) as I made laps on the coticule. How could this be?, I wondered, as I had both spine and edge flush to stone...something had to be very wrong indeed with this razor. So, I began the process of smoke signals to summon the elusive _____ ____ at TI.
_____ ____ extolled "No! Don't hone this razor!!!" (too late for that one), and explained to me that, quite remarkably, the razor's final processes of grinding were all done with the razor's spine WITHIN the plane of the grinding, as opposed to UPON it (or, in some artisanal cases, ABOVE the plane via tape/etc) as would be normal, intentionally to achieve maximum bevel acuity. They did this by free hand, if you can believe that. I can't imagine the skill it would take to do so and have a normal looking bevel. Said mostly it was with long belts and the razor aside these mediums, but some with very narrow wheels which wouldn't reach the spine were they upon the edge. This resulted in the razor that, upon my forearm cutting hair as high above the skin as I can muster via honing as the benchmark used here along with bringing a strand of the wife's down to the blade, cut hair upon me as no other ever has before or since....well, not the one I "messed" up by bringing it back to normal geometry, of course, but the next piece of such (5/8" pre-C135) that I took home...I still have that razor, and have never honed it, and it does not shave like anything else. In fact it is the only razor I own which I could fairly say I've yet to get anything but a spectacular result from.
How much longer can my specimen work like this? I dunno. _____ ____ told me that these 'negative bevel' pcs should be only touched up via their own wood-mounted strop with paste for as long as possible, because doing this would not bring the bevel back to normal, but could be kept as such for 2-3 years of daily use, and upon the first time you tried to hone on a regular stone/hone with spine and edge flush you'd start seeing the normal bevel angle popping up right at the edge and then it would be come just another normal well ground hollow French blade.
When I'd detailed this story on the other now-defunct forum a few years back, quite remarkably a seasoned hand who e-hung-out there had actually read of this notion in an old Sheffield text for grinders (he must be one hell of a researcher). The mystery person @ TI confirmed this to me as being their genesis, or at least having first got the idea there if not the manner of production.
Anyone out there have a 'negative bevel' TI (~2008-late 2011, extra hollow model 5/8 and 6/8 only), or one of the original of such from Sheffield? Anyone go to hone their TI or old Sheffield razor and start seeing a secondary bevel forming at the tip of the bevel planes while their confirmed-flat stone had both spine and edge flush upon it?
