Description
“Handmade in France”
Made by hand (and uniquely so), the Thiers-Issard brand is, in this one opinion, the most hollow ground and flexible razor left in production today. They’ve produced straight razors for nearly 100 years in Thiers, France, with traditional methods confined to this most special of nations, such as lead tempering and the use of a single forging die and multiple hammer/reheat/hammer cycles versus the quicker method employed elsewhere where a progressive series of forging dies are used in sequence with just one heating cycle.
‘1196’ is the designation of the Evide Sonnant Extra, TI’s bread-and-butter model. The “ESE” is supplied with a free basic black leather sheath/pouch. The scales here are costly; they’re made of ‘noble’ cork oak, which means TI sources blanks of wood much larger than they need to be, and allows them to age over seasons of temp/humidity variance prior to the woodworking, so that when they finally do cut them down to size they will tend to stay stationary more than others. Weight of this 5/8 variation of the ESE fitted in the oak handle is approximately forty-seven grams.
It is the firm belief here that Thiers-Issard is the absolute pinnacle of razor-pinning skill from the EU, the centering, tension maximum, and tension uniformity tendencies are tremendous. TI charges a high premium for the non-basic-celluloid scales on the ‘ESE’, because they can! As with all natural materials, however, you should be ever-mindful with any horn/timber/bone/ivory/etc. scales to carefully guide your razor’s toe back in to the scales by “fingertip-tugboat” when closing, as these materials will inevitably move to succumb to their environmental influences over time…there are always truly inert options available (such as resins and micarta), though they will of course lack the natural feel of anything ordained by nature instead of created by man.
Furthermore, in shaving with straight razors the majority of my lifetime now and having owned and used hundreds, a basic no-frills late-1990s to early 2000s copy (only remember which apartment, and its dates, I was living in when I got it) of this same ole ‘Evide Sonnant Extra’ razor is the finest shaving tool I’ve ever put to face, and as received new its bevel form was wavy as a funhouse mirror. As Sam Cassell might possibly decree, never mind how I look, just gimme the damn rock. While it isn’t a fancy looking TI among TIs, the Evide Sonnant Extra absolutely can shave you simply magically close.
“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 razor will be delivered to you Guaranteed Shave Ready! Observe this model razor being honed by TSS here and 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 shaped like larger wheels, thus honing from the spine toward the actual edge, leaving a *thin*, concave edge first and foremost.
The convex honing methods were used at Thiers-Issard for many years (they’re the ones that told me about it in the first place ~2010), though [as you can see in the video at top] today as the natural stone convex wheels once used are now commercially deceased, they use 5 pairs of ~flat discs to establish a cutting edge which is then ultimately refined with a dual-grit pasted strop. While I’ve tremendous respect for Thiers-Issard’s method and believe many people will love its shave straight out of the box, if you don’t mind more visual queues of honing, for my own face I prefer the concaved edge, and thus that is how I hone your razor when requested. If a commercial wheel fine and slow enough to establish a concaved bevel still existed, I believe they’d probably still use one.
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. Their intention is certainly for you to only need to strop the new razor (after wiping off the factory oil) prior to shaving to receive a terrific shave. Thanks for reading this, and happy shaving!
