Thiers Issard 889 Sheep & Wolf 6/8" Straight Razor Ram's Horn Scales France

Description: Premium 6/8" straight razor handmade in France. Carbon steel. Extra full hollow ground. Includes leather sheath. PLEASE ADD A 'NOTE TO VENDOR' AT CHECKOUT DENOTING WHICH NUMBERED PIECE OF INVENTORY YOU'D LIKE, AND ALSO WHETHER YOU'D LIKE IT FURTHER HONED POST-FACTORY, OR WITH THE FACTORY EDGE. “Handmade in France” Made by hand (and uniquely so), the Thiers-Issard brand is, in this one opinion, the most hollow ground and flexible razor left in production today. They’ve produced straight razors for nearly 100 years in Thiers, France, with traditional methods confined to this most special of nations, such as lead tempering and the use of a single forging die and multiple hammer/reheat/hammer cycles versus the quicker method employed elsewhere where a progressive series of forging dies are used in sequence with just one heating cycle. The 889 Wolf and Sheep is an ultra premium model Thiers-Issard razor, featuring the traditional and highly skilled French point in a 6/8″ size that has a tremendously thin extra hollow grind, and is supplied with a tan-colored soft vegetable-tanned leather sheath. Scales are ram’s horn and will of course each be quite individual. This stock is exceptionally well produced and emblematic of the premium razor on the world stage that Thiers-Issard absolutely deserves to be designated. The laser-engraved inlay on this model mentions “Sheffield Silver Steel”, but that doesn’t mean that this physical blank of raw steel comes from Sheffield, England. It does not matter, from the most economical to the most costly location, where raw untempered steel comes from in any forged piece of cutlery. What matters is its formulation of steel, and - vitally - the skill level in how it is forged, and then ultimately how it is tempered and ground by the grinders. Low cost Pakistani razors on the bad vendor sites love touting “Japanese steel” to fool some buyers, but they’re only (truthfully) referring to the country that first originated the recipe…you can rest assured the physical steel itself did not come from Japan, because there’s no reason to add that overhead, but much more important that they simply lack the skills for the difficult tempering/treatment processes, even though for the actual grinding the Pakistanis are, in fact, rather more competent than most. The pinning on the horn’s nice and tight, but *always be mindful with horn bone or timber* to guide your razor’s toe in to the scales by sight and careful guidance each and every time the action is performed. Bone, timber, and especially horn love to move, and that’s a fact ordained by nature that cannot be legislated or manufactured away! “Shave Ready”? If you elect for the factory edge, you’ll receive your razor exactly as its manufacturers intended…pretty simple! If you elect for The Superior Shave to further hone your razor, your razor will be delivered to you Guaranteed Shave Ready! The Superior Shave hones via a method best coined (by the old Thiers-Issard director) as “the opposite of tape“, where the hones’ shapes cater to performance and little else; you begin with your coarsest stone that’s shaped as the smallest imaginary wheel, and you progress to finer abrasives shaped like larger wheels, thus honing from the spine toward the actual edge, leaving a *thin*, concave edge first and foremost. The convex honing methods were used at Thiers-Issard for many years (they’re the ones that told me about it in the first place ~2010), though today as the natural stone convex wheels once used are now commercially deceased, they use 5 pairs of ~flat discs to establish a cutting edge which is then ultimately refined with a dual-grit pasted strop. While I’ve tremendous respect for Thiers-Issard’s method and believe many people will love its shave straight out of the box, if you don’t mind more visual queues of honing, for my own face I prefer the concaved edge, and thus that is how I hone your razor when requested. If a commercial wheel fine and slow enough to establish a concaved bevel still existed, I believe they’d probably still use one. There is no wrong or right choice for factory edge/further honed, but please do not believe all factory edges are never ‘Shave Ready’, that is an absurd yet common belief. Their intention is certainly for you to only need to strop the new razor (after wiping off the factory oil) prior to shaving to receive a terrific shave. Thanks for reading this, and happy shaving!

Price: 351.94 USD

Location: Jacksonville, Florida

End Time: 2024-11-29T21:11:35.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD