Steppin' Razor

This Probably Won't End Well...

Well, now I've gone & done it.

100 years of upgrades in shaving technology, and I've just taken a huge leap backwards for no good reason.

I have acquired a straight razor.

At this point, I haven't decided if it's going to be used for face-scraping, or just opening the occasional shipping carton.

I was hunting around on eBay for a damascus-bladed knife, and ran across a bunch of people selling damascus razors. The prices were affordable, leaving me to believe they're being sourced from a Pakistani sweatshop.

Still, in spite of living in mud huts and wearing bathrobes and shower shoes, give a Pakistani some old drill pipe, a set of files and a donkey-powered buffing wheel, and he'll turn out pretty respectable copies of whatever knife or gun you need.

So, I lost a few auctions before getting the high bid in, and this showed up in the mail last night:



The seller is advertising it as 512 layer damascus. That might be a bit optimistic. It's the real deal, though, and the quality isn't awful. The blade is better than the handle, which is a trifle wonky and leans to one side.

There's also no lock on a straight razor. With a heavy hand-forged blade, once you start it swinging, you really, really need to get anything made of meat out of its way. Like the honey badger, it just don't give a shit. It does what it wants.

I fully expect to slice the ever-loving $#!t out of one or more fingers this weekend. I ought to put up a Paypal donation button for some Bandaids...