Description
A new creation from Dovo for 2024, the “Runde Sache” has a modern style and an intricate engraving pattern on both sides of the blade.
The square head’s point is both extremely precise but just far enough of the old “spike” point that you’re not going to scratch yourself – Dovo does a wonderful job producing their square heads nowadays to be both a great visual aid for precision line-ups of beard/mustache/goatee/sideburns without being a safety risk.
Carbon steel ~140x18x4.2mm blade, with ~66mm of cutting edge length, ~4.2mm thick at spine, ~16.8mm from spine’s thickest point to cutting edge for a quite acute ~14.5-15° native cutting angle. The weight of the Runde Sache with its scales is just ~40 grams, quite low for a 5/8″ razor.
The Runde Sache has a robust PMMA handle. Keep it away from isopropyl alcohol or any other solvents and it will do just fine, it does not need any special upkeep. Wipe it down when you’re done with your shave and you’re good to go.
“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 Runde Sache 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!
