Hey guys Im wanting to buy a few Gold Dollar 66 razors for hopefully as cheap as possible since I might screw up a few of them. I found this auction: http://r.ebay.com/CILSr2 looking at the pics it has the china 66 marking on the tang but isn't advertised as a Gold Dollar razor... What do you guys think? Worth the risk of buying a few or do you have a link that is verified for a similar price? Thanks for the inputs!!!
Where to buy Gold Dollar 66
- Thread starter timtiminy
- Start date
Yep that looks like gold dollar razors, they don't always advertise them as such, you should be safe ordering these.
Are you afraid you'll get a counterfeit GD?!
j/k
j/k
Just out of curiosity, could someone possibly commission you to customize a GD for them? Your design, your call, just curious, I love your work.
There's a custom title in there somewhere.
awesome, thanks. Sorry if it seemed like I was trying to hijack this thread.
lmao
What if they got it wrong and left all the shoulders straight and didn't put that big heel stabilizer thingy in?
My gawd.....won't somebody think of the children?
Even worse:
What happens if they slap a "Dovo" name on the side and charge you $150???
Oh, the humanity!
Ugh, I am disgusted by all the claims of warped and otherwise faulty Dovo's out there. On the other hand, I can only hope that such fears steer people clear of new Solingens so they can learn to appreciate the quality and history of the old Sheffields again!
LOL, I see what you did there 
You can keep your Gold Dollars, I won't grudge you that. Not for me, though!
You can keep your Gold Dollars, I won't grudge you that. Not for me, though!
I do love Sheffield steel. If I could find them for $3.50 a pop Id bang them out all day and night.
Slash McCoy
I freehand dog rockets
Search ebay. Search for "straight razor" and select "buy it now" and set the order to "cheapest including shipping, first". Skim down to about $3.50 and start looking for anything that looks like a GD66. Look on the Australian ebay, too. There were a couple of vendors aiming at that market. But all will ship to the U.S. and most have free shipping. Expect it to take 2 or 3 weeks to arrive. May as well get a dozen at a time. Anything under $4.50 would be a reasonable price but they have gone as cheap as $3.50 including shipping. If no luck, try again in a week or so.
You can also try alibaba.com if you are willing to order by the hundred lot or so. You can always sell off your excess. I would imagine you could get them a couple bucks apiece in quantity, though you might have to pay duty. Okay, so a $200 shipment... 10% duty... negligible.Maybe $40 shipping... still cheap enough to sell off your overage, spread the GD love, and have plenty for your future GD projects. You could probably sell them for $50/dozen with free shipping and make a lot of folks very happy.
Group buy?
You can also try alibaba.com if you are willing to order by the hundred lot or so. You can always sell off your excess. I would imagine you could get them a couple bucks apiece in quantity, though you might have to pay duty. Okay, so a $200 shipment... 10% duty... negligible.Maybe $40 shipping... still cheap enough to sell off your overage, spread the GD love, and have plenty for your future GD projects. You could probably sell them for $50/dozen with free shipping and make a lot of folks very happy.
Group buy?
I purchased a lot of 100 direct from the factory like three years ago. They were like $1.89 a razor. But after shipping, wire transfer fees, etc, etc. it ended up coming out to be about $3-4 a razor anyhow.
Just buy them off the Bay.
Just buy them off the Bay.
- Thread starter
- #18
Look at the Hobbyist sticky at the top of this forum. Mycarver has posted some great info as well. Slash McCoy also has posted his take on GD prep somewhere as well.
Slash McCoy
I freehand dog rockets
http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showth...-quot-7-day-set?highlight=Gold+Dollar+day+set
First and most important step is getting rid of the entire heel/shoulder/stabilizer part. Dremel and sanding drum will gitter done. Do at least 5 at a time so you can grind a few seconds, and put that one down and do the next one. By the time you get around to the first one again, it is cool enough for another few seconds. You can go 10 seconds or so no problem while you are grinding into heavy steel, but as you get the shoulder ground down and get into thinner steel, you need to cut back to 5 or even 3 seconds. Doing a bunch at once means you aren't just sitting there waiting for the grinding heat to dissapate. Then fair the spine into the tang, getting rid of the root of the shoulder. That will keep you occupied for a day or two.
Next thin the tang down. If the tang is thinner than the spine, you never have to worry about running the thick tang up onto the hone, which lifts the heel and presses down on the toe while honing. It helps you to keep the edge straight, if you like straight edges, which I do.
Next I breadknife the edge. I like it straight. It is SO much easier to hone frightfully sharp!
Next, remove the old scales. They are in the way. They are kinda ugly, too. Of course, you can just keep them and pin them back on when you are ready to re-scale. The problem is any grinding on the pin head will melt the washer into the plastic. It has a very low melting point. So unpin the razor with care, if you use power tools.
Then I thin down the spine. The stock GD66 has a bevel angle of around 18-1/2 degrees. It will shave with a bevel that big, yeah, and you might like it because it will shave but you will seldom cut yourself if the razor is nice and sharp. However, if you reduce the bevel angle to around 16 or 16-1/2 degrees, it is a very lively shaver. Sort of like the difference between driving a Buick Roadmaster and a Corvette. I love the performance of these razors with a more acute bevel.
http://www.thevoicestoldme.com/straightrazor/bevel.html explains a little about the bevel and basic blade geometry, and how to measure and calculate the bevel angle. Initially, just get it in the ballpark because you will fine tune it later as you work up to setting the initial bevel.
With the spine thinned down, you may have to thin the tang down some more. Anyway, you want the GD stamp to be gone, so you can do your own thing there. All of that work is done on a marble tile, with wet/dry sandpaper stuck to it with LocTite or 3M spray adhesive. You could cheat a little and use a belt sander clamped upside down in your vise, or using a stationary type belt sander.
Next I thin down the rest of the blade. Particular attention must be paid to where the heel was cut off. There will be a ridge of thicker steel at the cutoff and it needs to go away, especially out near the shaving edge. The whole idea is to get rid of any part of the razor that interferes with the edge laying flat on the honing surface. Also the slightly lighter and flexier blade shaves better for me. You can take this to extremes and end up with a "singing" blade. Delicate, but oh such a sweet shaver! Also the grind marks are not really removed from the blade at the factory, but are instead just buffed over. So a good progression of sandpaper improve the finish dramatically! Start with 80 or 120 grit. Sand down until ALL the surface has been rid of all factory grind marks, and the only scratches are those you put there with the coarse sandpaper. You can wrap it around a piece of rubber hose, or fold it over and pinch the blade between the folds of sandpaper. Whatever. Then move to your next grit. This time you need to completely remove ALL scratches left by the coarse grit, replacing it with the new finer scratches of the current stage. That is how the progression works. Each stage MUST do its job completely, because the next stage will take 10 times as long to do the work that should have been done by the previous grit. If you truly truly do each stage completely, you will end up with a very nice soft lustrous finish when you get to 2k grit. But you can do more. Continue with 3u diamond paste, either with a felt wheel on a Dremel, or by hand, with a bit of old t-shirt cloth. Then continue to progress through 1u, .5u, .25u, and finer if you like. Your finish will be a deep mirror polish that will delight the eye.
Next do a little exploratory honing. Break out a 325 grit DMT or one of the cheap diamond hones, 200 or 300 grit, from Harbor Freight. I love those cheap diamond plates! You need a sharpie marker, too. Paint the whole blade and tang. Give the blade a few laps, then examine it. If you see any shiny area where the sharpie ink was worn away on the hone, (other than the spine or edge, of course!) then that area needs to be reduced before honing the razor. So get the sandpaper, spray adhesive, and marble tile back out and work it down, then hand sand it to fair it smooth, and try again. Reduce those intruding areas so that they will not intrude even after the blade has worn down a good bit from honing. The only parts that should show shine after the sharpie test are a strip along the spine, and a nice consistent strip at the edge. If you see a hook pattern at the heel, then the heel area is not thinned down enough to match the rest of the blade. It will forever elevate the heel and wear the toe down faster than the rest of the blade, causing either a taper or a smile, in time. The razor should last a couple hundred years, at least. So you don't want normal honing to render the razor awkward to use or hone, or just plain ugly looking, in only 20 or 30 years of use and honing. So keep working on the details until you get perfect results from the sharpie test.
Now you can set the bevel. Every once in a while, break out your dial caliper or your micrometer and measure the spine thickness, and the distance between the far edge of the spine bevel strip and the very edge of the blade, so you can calculate the bevel angle. You can apply more pressure to the spine if needed. Since the edge was breadknifed, it will take a good bit of honing to reach a proper bevel, so you have plenty of time and opportunity to shift your pressure to spine or edge, as required. If this is your first GD and you are new to straight shaving, shoot for about a 17 degree bevel.
Once you are nearly at a good bevel, you can, if you like, switch to a finer hone. A 1200 DMT works okay. Works great if it has seen a lot of use. New ones have a lot of particles that stand proud of the surface, creating a poor finish. Maybe hone a few hard stainless kitchen knives on a new DMT before using it to set the bevel on a razor. You can also use the 1k Chosera, or a well lapped 1k Norton, or 1k wet/dry paper stuck to your marble tile, or 30u lapping film. 12u is popular but it is very slow for setting a bevel. After setting your bevel, you can go back through your sanding and polishing routine again. If you don't like the "hone wear" strip on the spine, sand that down round, taking care to not appreciably thin down the spine if it is the thickness you require. Double check the tang for intrusion into the honing plane, with the sharpie test.
At this point, you can re-scale the razor, since no more polishing is needed.
Okay, once the razor is in its scales, continue honing. I like a progression of lapping film. It is simply the best way to get an incredible edge. See this thread.
http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/283576-Lapping-film-try-it?highlight=lapping+film+try+it
and this demo
http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showth...emo-on-youtube?highlight=youtube+lapping+film
Finish on balsa pasted with .25u diamond on the coarse side, .1u on the fine side, strop her up on the hanging leather, and get lathered up for the shave of your life.
Mycarver goes way beyond my merely functional approach, and he creates some true works of art out of these humble little razor shaped objects. There have been a couple of GD challenge cookoff type threads, and you could get some ideas there, because some of these more creative and artistical guys really pull out all the stops. Or you can just do the bare minimum, reducing the shoulder, maybe thinning the tang and spine, and just honing the razor into an ugly but very good shaver. It's all about what you will settle for.
First and most important step is getting rid of the entire heel/shoulder/stabilizer part. Dremel and sanding drum will gitter done. Do at least 5 at a time so you can grind a few seconds, and put that one down and do the next one. By the time you get around to the first one again, it is cool enough for another few seconds. You can go 10 seconds or so no problem while you are grinding into heavy steel, but as you get the shoulder ground down and get into thinner steel, you need to cut back to 5 or even 3 seconds. Doing a bunch at once means you aren't just sitting there waiting for the grinding heat to dissapate. Then fair the spine into the tang, getting rid of the root of the shoulder. That will keep you occupied for a day or two.
Next thin the tang down. If the tang is thinner than the spine, you never have to worry about running the thick tang up onto the hone, which lifts the heel and presses down on the toe while honing. It helps you to keep the edge straight, if you like straight edges, which I do.
Next I breadknife the edge. I like it straight. It is SO much easier to hone frightfully sharp!
Next, remove the old scales. They are in the way. They are kinda ugly, too. Of course, you can just keep them and pin them back on when you are ready to re-scale. The problem is any grinding on the pin head will melt the washer into the plastic. It has a very low melting point. So unpin the razor with care, if you use power tools.
Then I thin down the spine. The stock GD66 has a bevel angle of around 18-1/2 degrees. It will shave with a bevel that big, yeah, and you might like it because it will shave but you will seldom cut yourself if the razor is nice and sharp. However, if you reduce the bevel angle to around 16 or 16-1/2 degrees, it is a very lively shaver. Sort of like the difference between driving a Buick Roadmaster and a Corvette. I love the performance of these razors with a more acute bevel.
http://www.thevoicestoldme.com/straightrazor/bevel.html explains a little about the bevel and basic blade geometry, and how to measure and calculate the bevel angle. Initially, just get it in the ballpark because you will fine tune it later as you work up to setting the initial bevel.
With the spine thinned down, you may have to thin the tang down some more. Anyway, you want the GD stamp to be gone, so you can do your own thing there. All of that work is done on a marble tile, with wet/dry sandpaper stuck to it with LocTite or 3M spray adhesive. You could cheat a little and use a belt sander clamped upside down in your vise, or using a stationary type belt sander.
Next I thin down the rest of the blade. Particular attention must be paid to where the heel was cut off. There will be a ridge of thicker steel at the cutoff and it needs to go away, especially out near the shaving edge. The whole idea is to get rid of any part of the razor that interferes with the edge laying flat on the honing surface. Also the slightly lighter and flexier blade shaves better for me. You can take this to extremes and end up with a "singing" blade. Delicate, but oh such a sweet shaver! Also the grind marks are not really removed from the blade at the factory, but are instead just buffed over. So a good progression of sandpaper improve the finish dramatically! Start with 80 or 120 grit. Sand down until ALL the surface has been rid of all factory grind marks, and the only scratches are those you put there with the coarse sandpaper. You can wrap it around a piece of rubber hose, or fold it over and pinch the blade between the folds of sandpaper. Whatever. Then move to your next grit. This time you need to completely remove ALL scratches left by the coarse grit, replacing it with the new finer scratches of the current stage. That is how the progression works. Each stage MUST do its job completely, because the next stage will take 10 times as long to do the work that should have been done by the previous grit. If you truly truly do each stage completely, you will end up with a very nice soft lustrous finish when you get to 2k grit. But you can do more. Continue with 3u diamond paste, either with a felt wheel on a Dremel, or by hand, with a bit of old t-shirt cloth. Then continue to progress through 1u, .5u, .25u, and finer if you like. Your finish will be a deep mirror polish that will delight the eye.
Next do a little exploratory honing. Break out a 325 grit DMT or one of the cheap diamond hones, 200 or 300 grit, from Harbor Freight. I love those cheap diamond plates! You need a sharpie marker, too. Paint the whole blade and tang. Give the blade a few laps, then examine it. If you see any shiny area where the sharpie ink was worn away on the hone, (other than the spine or edge, of course!) then that area needs to be reduced before honing the razor. So get the sandpaper, spray adhesive, and marble tile back out and work it down, then hand sand it to fair it smooth, and try again. Reduce those intruding areas so that they will not intrude even after the blade has worn down a good bit from honing. The only parts that should show shine after the sharpie test are a strip along the spine, and a nice consistent strip at the edge. If you see a hook pattern at the heel, then the heel area is not thinned down enough to match the rest of the blade. It will forever elevate the heel and wear the toe down faster than the rest of the blade, causing either a taper or a smile, in time. The razor should last a couple hundred years, at least. So you don't want normal honing to render the razor awkward to use or hone, or just plain ugly looking, in only 20 or 30 years of use and honing. So keep working on the details until you get perfect results from the sharpie test.
Now you can set the bevel. Every once in a while, break out your dial caliper or your micrometer and measure the spine thickness, and the distance between the far edge of the spine bevel strip and the very edge of the blade, so you can calculate the bevel angle. You can apply more pressure to the spine if needed. Since the edge was breadknifed, it will take a good bit of honing to reach a proper bevel, so you have plenty of time and opportunity to shift your pressure to spine or edge, as required. If this is your first GD and you are new to straight shaving, shoot for about a 17 degree bevel.
Once you are nearly at a good bevel, you can, if you like, switch to a finer hone. A 1200 DMT works okay. Works great if it has seen a lot of use. New ones have a lot of particles that stand proud of the surface, creating a poor finish. Maybe hone a few hard stainless kitchen knives on a new DMT before using it to set the bevel on a razor. You can also use the 1k Chosera, or a well lapped 1k Norton, or 1k wet/dry paper stuck to your marble tile, or 30u lapping film. 12u is popular but it is very slow for setting a bevel. After setting your bevel, you can go back through your sanding and polishing routine again. If you don't like the "hone wear" strip on the spine, sand that down round, taking care to not appreciably thin down the spine if it is the thickness you require. Double check the tang for intrusion into the honing plane, with the sharpie test.
At this point, you can re-scale the razor, since no more polishing is needed.
Okay, once the razor is in its scales, continue honing. I like a progression of lapping film. It is simply the best way to get an incredible edge. See this thread.
http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/283576-Lapping-film-try-it?highlight=lapping+film+try+it
and this demo
http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showth...emo-on-youtube?highlight=youtube+lapping+film
Finish on balsa pasted with .25u diamond on the coarse side, .1u on the fine side, strop her up on the hanging leather, and get lathered up for the shave of your life.
Mycarver goes way beyond my merely functional approach, and he creates some true works of art out of these humble little razor shaped objects. There have been a couple of GD challenge cookoff type threads, and you could get some ideas there, because some of these more creative and artistical guys really pull out all the stops. Or you can just do the bare minimum, reducing the shoulder, maybe thinning the tang and spine, and just honing the razor into an ugly but very good shaver. It's all about what you will settle for.
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