Description
The Dovo INOX straight razor (model 41) is their bread and butter stainless steel straight razor, produced essentially unchanged for over forty years. It is well balanced, easy to hone and handle, and has a durable shaving edge character. It is a capable razor, able to hold an impressively-thin edge despite its stainless steel formulation. Even with its factory edge, this razor impresses me;
Beyond the olivewood handle used on this 415875, this is the same exact razor as discontinued models 415815 and 415855 (buffalo horn), and the still-in-production #415385.
1.4034 stainless steel blade (~4.7×16.7mm blade, ~16-16.5° cutting angle, ~43g weight), with file jimps (little ridges) to the underside of the blade’s tang.
The olivewood here (from SE European olea europaea trees) is aged to blanks 100% formed by Dovo. It also matches their own 918106 shaving brush.
Dovo Equals Straight Razor Tradition
Dovo-Stahlwaren continued operation in one building 115 years (1906-2021 and which included spring of ’45!), and during that time they produced razors with the Dovo and other famed marques under that same footprint. Workers commit to a 2-year fulltime apprenticeship under their incumbents following grade school, and then attend a three year specialty school of metallurgy and grinding (30 hours a week class time!) to become a master grinder, which is one who has displayed command of all preparation/use skills to earn the respected Solingen title. Tools preceding WWII work upon a Dovo INOX straight razor today, and workers grading with traditional quality checklists at over one hundred steps.
“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 INOX 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!
