Woooohooooo, I bet she doesn't use a GD66.....
Tell me about the allure of Damascus
- Thread starter MikekiM
- Start date
. . . and I thought things couldn't get any better after Brian's awesome razor. guess again . . . .
That's like asking:
"what's the allure of the bikini?"
The man is obviously a genius!
A seven day set might be nice! 
Wow ... and I thought the DE forum was cool ...
Amazing patterns!
But what's the allure?
That mokume tang is gorgeous. Well the whole razor is actually, but I'm a huge fan of mokume.
You can tell a difference in a pattern welded blade on a knife versus a single steel blade. They have a "toothy" edge from the difference in the steels. But I would say as fine as a razors edge is you would never notice it.
So, it's the carbon?
Matt, I thought the first few artisan damascus blades had that problem, so they started forming the damascus in such a way that the core (what made the edge and bevel) was a single type of steel and only the exterior of the razor was formed of the "damascus" patterned mix?
If I deserve any credit for this razor it would be the idea for a mokume tang. I was admiring ivory tangs and MOP tangs and wanted something like that, but at the same time wanted something unique for my retirement. I asked TZ if a mokume tang was possible and he said yes and seemed to really like the idea. He made the mokume and the mosaic pin as well. I didn't even know he made mokume. He made me very feel very much a partner throughout the process. Sent me update pictures and offered me choices throughout. I got precisely what I wanted with no compromises. In case you haven't noticed I am a fan! I even lucked into the 2H2H prototype because of this razor. This was all about the time he suffered his motor cycle accident and he felt bad for the delay it caused. He was developing the 2H2H series while he healed up and asked me if I wanted a one off 2H2H prototype before the others went into production. Needless to say I jumped at the chance.
I have a Zowada and also two Thiers Issard Damascus razors (5/8" and the new 6/8") as well as several non-Damascus razors. My experience has been that there is a difference. A finely honed razor of either type can achieve equally fine results, but the Damascus razors have a very fine roughness to their edges and so also have a slight sandpaper effect of removing dead skin and also have slightly more drag as they are pulled across my face. I have also noticed that when they are very well honed they seem to require fewer passes to achieve a BBS shave. I still cherish my non-Damascus razors and can achieve pretty much simlar results with almost any of them, but I think the Damascus are probably a little bit better at freshening up the skin and thus are also more prone to causing razor burn because of this, if I were to overdo it. The Zowada has the best ergonomics and balance of my razors (along with my new Brian Brown B and B LE, but they are fairly different), so I would consider it special even if it were not Damascus. Comparing the Damascus TI razors to non-Damascus TI razors the difference in feel is definitely there.
