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.
We’ll crack one open in video form soon!
If you’d like your razor further honed post-factory, please add a “note to vendor” during checkout. Otherwise, just pick the ‘specimen’ you’d like from the ‘police lineup’ images and that’s the exact razor you’ll receive!
