Description
The Dovo Best Quality 126803810 (old model no. 100681) 6/8″ width carbon steel razor is their basic offering with round point and celluloid handle. There’s nothing fancy, just a great blade without the frills; an ideal beginner’s tool. It has a stabilizer within the scales preventing ‘closing’ too deeply & providing suitably enduring spacing. This razor’s ~5mm thick at spine and weighs ~57 grams. It is a full hollow ground razor, the most common grind style and the ultimate preference of a majority of users.
6/8″ Size
This Best Quality 100681 is a 6/8″ razor, thicker at the tang (the part held while shaving) and wider from spine to edge than a 5/8″ razor. Whether one’s better served in their maiden voyage choosing 5/8 or 6/8 is a well divided issue as benefits/drawbacks are present for each. I advise to choose based on one’s fingertips’ girth and overall hand size; large, thick hands feel at home with a 6/8″, while if one does not have such mitts they’re better with a 5/8″ razor. A 6/8″ obstructs more of the mirror, and while this may seem trivial, you’ll be surprised how much extra the +1/8″ obstructs when shaving around the mouth once you begin. There are many 5/8″ Dovo models, and many from other marques, but in the classic style of 6/8″ razor with shoulder Dovo only offers this entry level version here in 2021.
Celluloid Scales
The celluloid scales on Dovo’s Best Quality 6/8 are extra tight and fragile. Squeaky tight, they come; much tighter than all competition, and that does help when learning. While this handle will not break without your help, three things break this razor’s handles that will not affect in any way the other models. Read on, dear, for you will learn what you must (not) do.
Be Careful!
Never apply pressure to the pivot point upon the scales of this Dovo Best Quality 100681 (especially easy to do when stropping), never open this razor >240°, and NEVER use any solvents (including isopropyl alcohol!) near the pivot! Doing any of these things, even once, will break these scales. If you never do any of them, they will never break. This saves a lot of money, and gives a “newbie” a tighter razor – if that is a good trade for you, only you can decide.
“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 Dovo ‘BQ’ 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!
