Description
The “Arena” is a new-for-2024 Dovo revival of the 8/8″ size extra large straight razors. One good thing about the slow inevitable death of this industry, if it can still be called that, is that as volume greatly decreases, the time on hand for trying new and exciting and more costly efforts increases. Back in the mid 2010s when straight razors were still doing comparatively quite well, there would not have been any razor maker in Europe, let alone the largest still in production as Dovo, that would commission an 8/8″ razor. But now, it is actually practical to try. Smoke ’em if you got ’em, these things will vanish one day and you don’t want to be holding a big bag of FOMO!
1.2210 carbon steel 8/8″ razor, burnished. Birch wood handle. Weight is approximately seventy grams.
Why “the Arena”?
On April 23, 1910, former US President Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech entitled “Citizenship in a Republic” at the Sorbonne in Paris. DOVO took inspiration from this speech, engraving a noted excerpt of it on the back of the knife. The quote’s often referred by “The Man in the Arena”, and if you’re an American that’s lived long enough to actually get off your phone screen (for which you’re probably even reading this sentence now!) and survey the greater world around you, you’ve likely heard of it. It is a quote meant to show that the people that try are the people that count in the end, that armchair quarterbacks no matter their wit or eloquence are a dime a dozen.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Matching the excerpt from the speech, a lion’s head is engraved on the front of the blade, representing the courage of people in the arena, any arena of life!
“Shave Ready”?
If you elect for the factory edge, you’ll receive your razor exactly as its manufacturers intended…pretty simple!
If you elect for The Superior Shave to further hone your razor, your ARENA will be delivered to you Guaranteed Shave Ready! The Superior Shave hones via a method best coined (by the old Thiers-Issard director) as “the opposite of tape“, where the hones’ shapes cater to performance and little else; you begin with your coarsest stone that’s shaped as the smallest imaginary wheel, and you progress to finer abrasives that are shaped as larger wheels, thus sharpening the bevel from the spine toward the actual edge, and leaving a *thin*, concave edge first and foremost.
At one time, years ago, natural stones were used for the establishing and refining of a bevel. But the lapidaries necessary for such extremely refined stones no longer exist, to say nothing of sourcing the strata itself from Earth. So today, Dovo uses a pair of manmade, convex spinning discs to establish their bevels, and thereafter refines with bench stones hand shape to be mildly convex, before finishing on a pasted strop. The spinning discs are coarser, and have a shorter effective diameter, while the bench stones are finer, and have much longer effective diameters. Thus, the bevels are indeed concave, same as ever.
But the steel itself can withstand much more concaving than practical today at any factory, with no negative effects for the longevity of your razor, so long as you keep exclusively to shaving with it, keeping a low spine angle, and keeping skin well stretched and lathered; for its intended job, concaving a razor bevel toward its metallurgical limits only benefits the shaver. If you intend to use your razor at an angle outside of normal shaving work or upon a surface unlike a well lathered and stretched beard, however, a flat or even a convex bevel will better endure such odd usage of these tools.
There is no wrong or right choice for factory edge/further honed, but please do not believe all factory edges are never ‘Shave Ready’ – that is an absurd, yet common, belief. It is certainly the intention of Dovo when producing the razor that you to only need strop (after wiping off the factory oil!) just prior to shaving to receive a terrific shave. Thanks for reading this, and happy shaving!
