Frank Warner Birdwing in Apple Coral & Dinosaur Bone

Beautiful piece of which I have a "brother" in the mail I am most thrilled to say...with some similarities and some differences--same blade and handle but old Ivory for the scales and a vine pattern for the filing with a brushed blade vs polished. I have a dino round in the blade as well but the stone from Utah! I can't wait for it to arrive!


Karl

I had coveted Frank Warner's birdwing design for years. Luckily, I was able to nab a spot on his waiting list. While in queue, I found Frank to be a fantastic creative partner in the endeavor, completely game to work with my fondness for natural history artifacts. I found a gorgeous slab of apple coral. Little did I know how much extra work I was creating for Frank who would have to labor away at this strangely porous material. When Frank produced early drawings, I was able to get a fella up in Canada to hand cabochon a small piece of 100 million year old dinosaur bone -- a dark color with a blood-red grain pattern -- to Frank's exact specs to be seated in the tang as an embellishment.

The design - as a work of art - embraces all the elements - finding that bridge between dinosaur, bird wing, and the ocean -- and even the filework is a thing of beauty, like rippling waves.

Ok, but how does she handle? First, let's take a look at the specs:

• Blade: Crucible Steel's S30V Stainless Steel. Mirror finish, fileworked and hardened to 62 Rc.
• Thickness: .125"
• Length: 5-1/4"
• Cutting edge: 2-5/16".
• Scales: 304 Stainless steel, interior surfaces jeweled.
• Handle: Apple coral, carved and sealed with 60 coats of cyanoacrylate resin and 7 coats of Turtle Wax.
• Embellishments: 100-million-year-old dinosaur bone cabochon in the tang.
• Overall length: (closed) 5-13/16" (open) 8-1/2"
• Weight: 2-1/8 ounces.

I personally would give this razor a 10 for balance, but I know I have a bias toward heavy-handled razors, so I marked it a 9.0 as that's what I imagine others might say.

The filework on the bottom jimps, besides being a perfect match for the spine's filework, is really the best grip I've ever found on a razor when it comes to basic handling during shaving and stropping.

The overall design is so unlike almost any other razor -- the only one I can compare it to is my DePew's "Perfect Razor." Both have small blades and long tails. But the steel in this custom so greatly surpasses that of the DePew's that all comparisons end there.

The razor I shave with most regularly before this birdwing arrived this past week was a 7/8" Robert Williams with hippo ivory scales - a gorgeous behemoth that must weigh a good forty pounds and which can remove all hair in a thirty-mile radius with one flick of the wrist. Ok, perhaps I exaggerate a bit, but the sensation of moving from the brilliantly mammoth Williams to this elegant birdwing is a bit like switching from bazooka to sniper rifle.

Shaving with this blade feels downright surgical. I find myself sniping individual mini-planes of my face, working small angles and edges around chin and jaw that I normally mow right over.

So it takes a good extra few minutes to finish shaving with the birdwing, but no stubble is left unturned, and a glance at the beautiful curves in that coral handle is all I need to smile my face skin taut and tight as I finish the day's shave.

This is, indeed, a razor for the ages.

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