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Thiers-Issard QC, ***?

A customer sent me a "new" TI razor they found on ebay asking if I could determine the reason the blade was off-center, he assumed the scales (horn) must have been warped. I opened up his package and inspected the razor and immediately I noticed the pivot pin was not perpendicular to the scales... The scales are straight, the blade is straight, the pivot pin is straight...the pivot holes were drilled incorrectly... I'm a little surprised a factory producing razors costing hundreds of dollars would allow something like this to pass QC... The peen on the pin was also less than stellar, sticking up a good 1/32" of an inch past the washer with burred edges, they didn't even attempt to blend the peen down with the washer for a smooth/flush peen. Just cut it off, gave it a few taps and left it sticking out.

Am I the only one who finds this to be unacceptable for a high-end razor?

I'll place a washer to shim the blade over towards the center and hone it for him, but I wanted to share this with the community for review.


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That's lame, I agree someone should have noticed that it didn't close correctly before shipping it out.
 
Certain imperfections ("charm") I find acceptable when it comes to new production razors. That one, however, I would not be pleased with as it is a fundamental issue that should have not passed inspection.
 
I would never pay money for a newly made razor. I have seen so many flaws in DOVOs, TI's & the likes that it is just ridiculous.
Their "high-end" scales are clumsy, thick & off balance, peening is never 100%. Blade grind is more often then not less then 95% perfect.

But obviously people are willing to buy these "hand-made" items, otherwise they would have all folded long time ago.

My take on it is that they would not have lasted a year with such bad QC some 100 years ago when the simplest, most common razor was always well made & INSPECTED before leaving the factory. [/rant]
 
If the razor came from Ebay how do you know it left the factory with those scales? They are sold separately. Also they use a press for drilling so the holes from them would have been perpendicular I would assume.
 
Never mind. I just noticed this came from eBay-who knows if that is how they left the factory. For all we know they started as the cheap plastic scales and someone tried to put on these scales and they drilled it wrong.
 
The customer stated to me that the razor was "new", now perhaps they were misled by the seller from eBay (like that ever happens!...). However, the razor arrived in the box and the sticker appears to match the razor as the original. I hope TI is better than that sort of standard, hopefully this was a previous owner's botched rescale.

I'll ask the owner if the razor was advertised as "new" from a dealer or if they bought it used, I was under the impression this was a factory new razor, it's clean enough to be new.
 
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The peening job definitely looks like a hack job, not factory fresh. The scales don't even have the telltale TI triangular shaped ends.
Looks like a rescale job to me, and a poor one at that.
 
So the owner got back to me and told me he bought it off ebay advertised as NOS. The box it came in has TI sticker which matches this razor exactly, same blade, same scales. I think the previous owner/seller bought these factory replacement scales and installed them and then advertised it as NOS. What a turd. Buyer beware on ebay folks, I hate to see people get cheated like this.

I guess the most likely story is a botched rescale attempt by the previous owner, sorry to any TI fans who may have felt offended.
 
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