Description
6/8 Version of the Venerable 5/8 Flagship
The Dovo 3680 Bergischer Lowe (= ‘mountain lion’) is the pinnacle of 6/8″ straight razors, with a terrifically hollowed grind, a shoulderless style, and a golden sculpted spine. The scales are made from cow horn (farmed many decades in France). Above all, each “BL” piece is individually unique, an expression of nature.
Spanish Point
The Spanish point style (only shared among Dovo straight razors with the ‘Sunday Shaver’ and smaller 3580 version of this same razor) is terrific for getting under one’s nose, and for maintaining a mustache/goatee.
Tremendous Concavity
The grind is wafer thin and this particular Dovo straight razor is hollow ground by Dovo’s most senior master grinders. This razor is substantially thinner than all 6/8″ Dovo round point models, indeed as physically thin as others designated as extra full hollow ground.
No Pesky Shoulder
The Bergischer Lowe is a “shoulderless” razor, due to no secondary ridge being near the tang. This is a rare feature on any 5/8″ razor, and it always involves extra skilled steps by the master grinders during production. Shoulderless razors lack any ridge to avoid during stropping and honing like upon a normal razor with a shoulder.
Gold Plated Tang, Tail, and Spine
Gold befitting of a beauty queen razor is dipped upon Berigscher Lowe’s upper portions as seen in the video below.
- 6/8″ width carbon steel razor
- Spanish point
- ~5.5mm thick at spine
- ~60mm cutting edge
- Weighs ~54 grams
- Both sides of blade hand polished
- Bovine horn handle (FR)
- Stabilizing pin halfway within horn handle (horn will always move, so manually guide the toe into and out of the scale each and every time you use this very fragile razor)
“Shave Ready”?
If you elect for the factory edge (= do nothing, no note needed @ checkout), you’ll receive your razor exactly as its manufacturers intended…pretty simple!
If you elect for The Superior Shave to further hone your razor [plz add “note to vendor” @ checkout], your Dovo “BL” will be delivered to you Guaranteed Shave Ready! Observe this precise model of razor being honed by TSS here! 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!
