Testing out Five Gold Dollar 66's purchased for <$5/each

[SliceOfLife]

And.. It can't hold an edge at 16.4*

Steel isn't good enough.

EDIT:"Edge Angle was being calculated using the wrong spine thickness measurement. Actual angle of the razor when this was happening was ~14 degrees, not 16.4"

 

[SliceOfLife]

These creased lines running perpendicular to the honing striations are steel tearing. Its what poor quality steel does when honed too thin. Pakistan-made RSO's do it when you try to hone them. These 66's handled honing @ 18.5+ ok... 16.5 they tear up. Steels not up to snuff for thinning the angle. Insufficient tensile strength.

EDIT:"Edge Angle was being calculated using the wrong spine thickness measurement. Actual angle of the razor when this was happening was ~14 degrees, not 16.4"

Shame, I'll probably wind up pif'ing or selling the other 4 once they get back, as I prefer sharper angled razors. I'll be curious to see if the 81 and 59's have harder steel (esp the 59 since slash tells me it ships with a real low angle).

Now the question is if it's worth it to me to knock 1.5mm off the depth of this one to turn it into a 5/8" 18* razor and rebevel or if I should just toss it in a junk lot as a destroyed razor. It'll be my desk "box cutter" razor for the time being.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Scratch that. That's not 16.5*, that's 14*... I was reading the spine thickness at top of honewear and blade depth at bottom of honewear. My bad. So GD66's can't handle 14* angle... Will try a 15* next.

I will try to push the edge back a touch.

 

[Slash McCoy]

Well I could have told you that 14deg would be pretty doubtful. I never take them any slimmer than 16.0 and I have best results around 16.5 to 17deg.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Yep. 15* no good either... Got a bevel at 16.4. Looking good. Here's the 15* shot... it was almost clean at 600 bevel... had to scan half the length to find this failure.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Alright... ~16* looks like the min. I'd say 17* to be safe. Sounds like you're hitting the sweet spot Slash.

I've tuned this into ~16* and got it to 8k without any tearing. It's pretty cut down, I had to chop it into a ~9/16" to catch up to how much I had thinned it. But it'll be a nice test if they can handle this edge angle at least.

 

[SliceOfLife]

And here’s the mangled remains at 16°

If it shaves well I’ll consider doing it to the other four, of course without thinning it quite so much that I have to cut a quarter of a blade depth out.

 

[global_dev]

And here’s the mangled remains at 16°

lol, thats a real stunner!

 

[DrStrange]

And.. It can't hold an edge at 16.4*

Steel isn't good enough.

Gold Dollars leave a grey dust mark on crox strop.
None of my other razors do that.

 

[Slash McCoy]

Gold Dollars leave a grey dust mark on crox strop.
None of my other razors do that.

We wouldn't know. Hardly anyone here still uses CrOx on a strop. That's kinda 1920's. So thanks for the observation.

I think maybe the gray stuff is stardust.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Yeah, I'd love if these could hold a 14* angle, but I never expected them to be able to. If a mod could edit a warning into my posts 41 and 42 noting my mistake so people aren't misled if they just skim the thread that'd be great.

I Feel like an idiot for grinding away for an hour taking the measurement at the wrong spot. But luckily I only killed one $5 razor making that mistake, and it looks like 16* and above are good to go.

And at least it wasn't so far gone I can't shave test it to see if it improves the shave enough to justify grinding in the other four when I get them back. Given the effort involved... I probably won't even if the shave is as good as it should be... mainly cause I'd have to rescale them to really be happy with them as well, and I don't really need 4 more razors anyway. But it's good to know what the steel is capable of so I know what options are out there at least.

I am really curious about that 59 now though, Stupid shaping on it, but if it's as acute as you suggested, I wonder if they're leaving the steel harder on it... might be a worthwhile alternative for mods if that's the case. A Gold dollar that's capable of a 12-14* angle would be fun.


Edit: Just shaved. Yep, angle fix was nice. 16* seems to suit me well enough... better than the stock angle anyway. On the downside, since I ground almost everything they hollowed off it; it feels like a near wedge now.

 

[DrStrange]

We wouldn't know. Hardly anyone here still uses CrOx on a strop. That's kinda 1920's. So thanks for the observation.

I think maybe the gray stuff is stardust.

That's one way of looking at it.

How did Iron come to earth (millions of years ago)? | Socratic

Iron is made inside stars. Iron is made inside stars, specifically red super-giants. The elements form together inside a star during fusion. When the supernova occurs, the iron fragments are blasted into the space. This is how Iron came to Earth millions of years ago. You can see the image below...

socratic.org

 

[SliceOfLife]

GD81 is here.

I won't say it's shave ready yet... but I'm gonna give it a chance. It's close. Sharp heel to toe, and nice clean edge. Looks like a .5 micron stropped edge maybe? For ~$12, I'm not gonna complain.


Scales are better. Will know after the shave if they're good enough... leaning towards not, but possibly with some rounding of the edges they could be made to work.

edit: Just stropped... I think scales are workable... the corners are mildly irritating, but stropping this razor doesn't cramp up my hand nearly as much as stropping the 66 does. If you took them to a sanding tool and rounded off the corners, they'd actually be pretty decent scales.

Angle? Between 17 and 17.5 degrees.


I can see why Slash was praising this as so much better than the GD66... unless it has a surprise in store for me, this is a VAAAAASTLY better razor. It's looking better than my GD800 was on arrival.


Just checked @ the listing... I bought it from an Amazon vendor and didn't even check if they called it shave ready.

It says: "Our men straight razors are ground by 1000#, 2000#, 3000#, 5000#, 10000# whetstones, then stropping"

Since it also says to strop before using, I suspect "stropping" means abrasive stropping... and Yes this looks like a 10k + pasted strop edge.

I may clear out the area around my better scope and confirm that it's pasted, but to my eyes it looks like it is @ 400x.

 

[SliceOfLife]

So the shave.

It is shave ready.

It's the best "other honer" edge I've used. I don't make a habit of shaving with others' edges, but I've had two razors pro-honed over the years as well as countless "shave ready" purchases.

I'd rate it 44/50 comfort and 45/50 closeness (from my scale in this thread) My shave results; edge comparisons. - https://www.badgerandblade.com/forum/threads/my-shave-results-edge-comparisons.569284/

It wouldn't be a "WOW, what a shave" edge for me, but I wouldn't wonder how it slipped in there with my own edges either.

Does not feel like a .5 chromox edge. Feels like a well done high end synth edge to me. My new theory is 10k followed by a very fine and very few passes (.1 or .25) stropping. Didn't have the characteristic feel of a "pasted strop" edge to me, but I'd be very shocked if they're pushing edges out that clean-looking (@400x) without the use of a pasted strop. (Also, that little shadow right before the edge in that image is usually an indication of pasted stropping). In either case, their honers are no joke... not just for a $12 razor... they're legitimate honers.

I'm really, just shocked at the quality of what I received for the cost. Truly impressed.


Edit: I'm also thinking those specks on the bevel in my pre-shave picture above might be abrasive particles that came off during pasted stropping. Razor was not oiled (as far as I could tell) on arrival.

 

[Slash McCoy]

I see a 7 day set in your future.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Haha. Tough to say. I did just get a couple additional razor cases, so I've got the room now.

 

[global_dev]

couple additional razor cases,

what kind of cases?

 

[SliceOfLife]

One of the 18 razor wooden ones (ebay score, my third one now), and I won the traveling salesman watch case from the auction.

 

[SliceOfLife]

I did pick up 3 more GD81's from the same honer/reseller source so I at least have the 4 piece "testing set" I tried using the stock GD66's for. I'll decide later if I want to rescale them or just try to round off the corners of these scales... but I'll have 3 more samples to confirm if they are putting out nice shave ready finishes like I got on my first blade consistently. If so, honestly, this may become my go to recommendation for a cheap starter blade. The first one is definitely a blade that you could pick up and comfortably shave with out the gate... and it cost less than a professional honing does... shipped to your door.

My W59 just shipped, so it's probably 2-8 weeks out still (that one is coming from China). Still looking forward to playing around with it... thinking I'll probably sell off the 66's as soon as I get them back. Really understanding the rec's to skip them for the 81 now that I've got an 81 in my hands... not thinking it's even worth my time to grind them down to 17*, because they'd still have other grind problems and the crummy scales. Instead I can just dump them cheap and focus on the 81's instead. Maybe keep one around in case I want to enter the GD mod competition one of these years.

Question will be if I'll have any inclination to thin down the 81's a touch more (17-17.5 I can usually live with, but I'll try a couple "duller" finishes and see if they seem happy there or if a push into the 16's would be justified). Probably will just keep them as is. I have no problem thinning blades safely and keeping them cool; but doing so and then cleaning up the spine so they stay looking newish? I don't have that skill-set... especially since I got rid of my buffer wheel, and it'd be nice to keep them looking new for awhile.

 

[Slash McCoy]

A shave ready P81 is indeed a good recommendation for a first razor. An unhoned P81 is not a bad recommendation for a razor for a newbie to practice honing on. I am thinking you probably will not like the W59. For the modding competition you want more than one razor because you will probably destroy a couple of them.

Thinning the spine is simple to just do, not so simple to do right. If you want to turn it into a great razor, you will also need to push the hollowgrind up higher into the spine, to reduce the contact area on the spine. Easy way is the nose roller on a Black and Decker Dragster type belt sander clamped upside down in your bench vise with the guard removed. Use of two layers of protection, i.e. goggles and face shield, are MOST HIGHLY recommended. Anyway after expanding the hollowgrind, you can also round the spine back down so it looks unmodified, Take a dremel with a sanding drum attachment along the lower edge of the contact area and leave the top border alone. Then hand sand the blade, pinching it between folds of a piece of good wet/dry red resin type sandpaper. Start with maybe 100 grit and progress, always totally removing the previous grit scratches with the current grit. Maybe go 100, 220, 320, 600, 1000, 1500, 2000 grit. Then 1u diamond paste on a cloth wheel, .5u, .25u, and ,1u for a nice mirror finish. Be caferul to not overheat the blade. Try laying the blade down on an aluminum plate, which will both protect the edge and also serve as a heat sink.

Next, reduce the shank thickness and grind away the heel, stabilizer, and what's left of the shoulder. You can fair it all together and have a very nice shoulderless thumbnotched razor when you are done.

Is it all worth it? Depends on you, what you want. That's about 100 hours of work if you don't cut any corners. And as I have demonstrated, you can hone an unmodified Gold Dollar to absolutely shave ready condition using The Method.

The nice thing about a Gold Dollar is it is totally expendable. Do what you like to it, whatever blows your skirt up. You will only be out a few bucks and the time spent on it.

BTW as I recall the competition is for Gold Dollars, not any specific model. 208, P81, 800, all should be good for the competition. Just sayin.