Description
Centuries of tradition.
Wood grown for decades.
One year of development.
The EDO’s an accomplished blade design in tribute to Japanese blacksmithing, “ground concavely from the back to the cutting edge” as Dovo puts it.
The wood scales, made from spruce here, are not strictly the natural timber as felled from the tree, but instead wood that’s been made more dense and hard through a laborious process, so that it can easily endure exposure to water and soap. For once, steve56 is correct; on the EDO, the scales are joined with a spacer, rather than a wedge (preferred to most purists for the ability to make the razor ‘breathe’ around the scales as it goes through its motions), and I do not believe I’ve seen that before on any Dovo I’ve traded (though it could have been on the discontinued stainless steel #415-5846, never thought to check). Every other current production Dovo does indeed use wedge-shaped spacers at the toe end of the razor (if not as dramatically angled as razors used to be), so I’m sure they had their reasons to make the end come together parallel here on this costly model, though I don’t know what they were.
I do not believe I’ve ever seen before the curious “inverted Turkish point” in a Western razor, but have seen it once or twice from high quality Japanese razors – so perhaps that’s the part that’s truly in devotion to the “J-West” as they’re often referred.
Coming it at a robust seventy-one grams when fitted to these ~3.2mm-thick spruce scales, I believe this EDO the heaviest 5/8″ EU straight razor I’ve handled; a whopping-for-the-straight-razor-realm *nine grams* heavier than the discontinued Dovo #415 with its impractical stainless steel scales! However, that old #415 had quite poor balance – because of this razor’s unique profile (~5mm at thickest of spine, a 4.2mm-4.6mm thick tang, ~69mm cutting edge span, ~30mm worth of monkey tail length, and ~162mm from tail to tip), the balance of the razor is quite good. So, this will be a great razor for someone that prefers a 5/8″ size and has big, strong hands.
“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 EDO 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!
