DA, Dilucot, d'oh, dammit!!

[Matt]

Greetings, friends.

Yesterday I started my exercise with DA, fixed the spine/shoulder issue with a Dremel, and went on with improved Dilucot.

Now I don't know if it's something with my honing, with the steel, or maybe it wasn't a good day for doing it. It took me some huge amount of halfstrokes to get to shaving arm hair stage. I lost the count somewhere, but rest assured I approached 100 (!). It got me pretty frustrated, but I thought to myself 'easy mate, slowly but surely' so I carefully started the Dilucot and completed the procedure. HHT even after stropping was a feeble violin and I would give up on it if I hadn't read opinions that DA respond quite poorly to HHT. So I thought I'd unicot this and see where it gets me. Did so, HHT was hardly any better, so I took another straight just in case and went to the bathroom.

Completely miserable it was. :thumbdown: DA did't shave a thing, I put it away after first two strokes.

Are they made of some extra hard steel, or what? :blink:

regards,
Matt

PS. Maybe now it'd be good idea to determine if this is DA at all? haha :

 

[yohannrjm]

Hmm...that does look like a DA razor. Those arrows sort of give it away : .

I have a GD that I honed up using a combination of Uni/dilucot (started off on unicot and switched to dilucot halfway through). I used a bit of pressure at the bevel setting stage but then backed off to no pressure for the rest of the way.

It shaves beautifully, BTW.

I did cheat a bit : . I set the bevel using my DMT 1200/8000 sequence. Then I polished off the scratches left by the DMT's using a mejiro nagura slurry (supposedly about 6000 grit) on my Asagi. The Asagi seems to be able to completely remove scratch marks left by the DMT's better than the coti. After that I switched to the coti and honed away.

My razor was in slightly better cosmetic shape than yours, though.

 

[Matt]

Heh... These are pictures straight off of an auction, I didn't bother to shoot it again.

It looks a little better now, all the nasty black things are gone (it was mainly dirt as far as I remember).

regards,
Matt

 

[yohannrjm]

BTW, I'm assuming the GD's and DA's are the same. I remember reading somewhere that that's what people think. Your razor doesn't look like the 'new production' DA's .

Maybe you have a 'vintage' DA.

 

[garyhaywood]

i have honed at least 100 plus times on my da's. They do passhht pritty good, not as good as some of my dovo's etc. i did'nt find the steal harder or any longer to reach keeness. Just set bevel on somthing coarser. then do half strokes on coti to replace scratch pattern then dilute using barts new method with half strokes.It does work and much quiker.

it's hard to tell, but it looks like you need to roll a little. To get the toe and heal developing.

 

[Bart]

Gold Dollars and Double Arrows are, to my knowledge, not the same. Allegedly, they're made by different manufacturers.

What you have, is a stamped Double Arrow. I have never tried one of these, because I was told to stay away from them. The guy I got my 30 unstamped Double Arrows from said that the stamped ones are no good, after I placed my order, so he had no reason to not tell the truth. Also Kenrup, who's a highly reputed seller of strops and entry-level razors doesn't think highly about the stamped ones:

(talking about the unstamped Double Arrows):I've not had a bad blade yet. However, the quality control is pretty poor for these razors. Lately, I have had to repin all of them to get the scales to align. The original pins have been cut to long and not finished. Every pin has been bent. The steel is very good. Under a microscope, they look better then some of the new German razors ($60-$70 range) that I'm getting from clients to hone. Before I resell them, I have repined, smoothed out the scale edges and honed them. I would venture to say I'm close to or at the 100 mark for dealing with these razors. I firmly believe that these are a better razor to learn to str8 shave then a taking a chance on an eBay junker or flea market special.

I believe the confusion comes from the black handled Chinese razor that actually has crossed arrows stamped on the tang. These are junk, they also cost more.

Yours is white handled, but I still think it's the one Kenrup called to "work as good as a three dollar vacuum cleaner".

The thread on SRP is located here: http://www.straightrazorplace.com/forums/razors/21410-chinese-double-arrow.html

Best regards,
Bart.

 

[tat2Ralfy]

"work as good as a three dollar vacuum cleaner".

Oh My!

Bwhahahaha

So its as much use as an ash tray on a motorbike?

 

[Matt]

So its as much use as an ash tray on a motorbike?

:

Okay... Thanks a lot Bart, that'll save me some frustration...

kind regards,
Matt