In need of a starter Straight Razor

Hi, I'm in need of help.
I want to start straight shaving and all i need now is a razor, but the more i read as to which one, the more confused i get!
I'm in the UK
I was looking at a dovo carbon full hollow carbon steel 5/8 blade, but can't find any stock in the uk!
I have looked on ebay but i wouldn't know whats good and rubbish!
can anyone help!!
thanks
Paul

Hi

It iws a minefield.
As you are in the Uk have a look at invisibleedge, they have some great strater razors, email Steve and he could advise

My advice is if it is your first buy from someone who knows what they are talking about.

Ebay can produce good stuff biut more often than not ..... not

new dovo razors are about £30 more on there than anywhere else

i just brought a Le Grelot 6/8 from the english shaving company. they sell for 65 pounds. it seemed to receive high praise from members at straight razor place.

it is yet to arrive in the mail so i can't really tell you much else about it.

As many will say, get a shave ready razor. Honed by a master. There are many on this site and straight razor place. I payed $45 for mine from KenRup. Not an expensive or fancy blade but honed to shave readiness and it shaves nice.

mkevenson said:

As many will say, get a shave ready razor. Honed by a master. There are many on this site and straight razor place. I payed $45 for mine from KenRup. Not an expensive or fancy blade but honed to shave readiness and it shaves nice.

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Yes do that, my first honing was terrible but I knew it was me and not the razor since it was pre-honed when I got it. It's hard enough to get the right method, don't try to learn how to hone it at the same time...

i bought a dovo black star from the invisible a great razor, a great price & he make it shave ready with no extra charge & he is based in the the uk,
well worth checking him out

+1 on the ebay thing. I'm also new to razors but I know a little about knives, and one from Pakistan are invariably cr*p.
I had a knife once that looked like stainless, but rusted in places as if it was carbon steel. Stainless can rust, but not like this.
I tried an experiment to see what was going on by wiping the blade with gun bluing cream. In theory, this should not touch stainless, but will turn carbon instantly black. What happened was bizarre, the blade blackened in some areas, but not in others, it looked like cowprint!

I have since learned that Pakistani cutlery is generally made from any old scrap steel that can be found, my knife appears to be a mixture of at least two types of steel (and not in a good way like damascus).

Using scrap steel means that there is no possible way for the smith to know the carbon content, so hardening and tempering arre going to be pure guesswork.

I actually have two cheapo ebay razors. The craftmanship is actually just fine, they are nicely ground and finished, but they will not take an edge no matter what I do to them.

The reason I bought them was because I wanted a razor- shaped piece of steel to practice honing with so I didn't ruin a good razor with poor technique.
I got two because it was buy one get one free, and I paid £12 in total.

They did their job because now I can move a blade over a hone without scraping the edge or wearing the spine down unevenly, but I'll never be able to shave with them.

I have got a few vintage razors off ebay and never paid more than £10 for one. There's a guy in the UK who offers a honing service, and although I haven't sent my razors to him as yet, I have heard good things about him.
I think he charges £13 for a hone and strop, so if you get a razor from ebay and send it to him, you could be good to go for less than £30.

http://www.razorsharpening.co.uk/

He also sells shave ready vintage razors for reasonable prices here:

http://www.theinvisibleedge.co.uk/shavereadyrazors.html

tigerblade said:

new dovo razors are about £30 more on there than anywhere else

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Sorry about that guys but since I started with Dovo the ££ has devalued better than 20% against the Euro, hence the price hike on new stock - plus Dovo have just had a price rise as well! Won't be long for everyone - the bow-wave will hit soon!

Tell me about it. Until recently I had a clothing, body piercing and tattoo business, and most of our suppliers were in mainland Europe, and thus used the Euro.
The exchange rate absolutely killed the business, not only did I have to deal with the fact that nobody in the UK is shopping, I also had to deal with the fact that my stock now cost considerably more to buy in.

The extra cost of the stock plus the discount needed to get anyone to spend money reduced my profit margin to zero practically overnight, and I have just gone bust after 12 years of successful trading