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- Silly Suffolk
As a big fan of slant razors (and pretty much anything else, but that's another story), and forever searching for that elusive "best", I thought I'd get one of these.
The head is, like the 102, a matt aluminium casting, and looks clean and precise. Oddly, my other Shavecraft aluminium heads have "Ikon" or similar cast into the bottom of the baseplate, but this has no name at all. When supplied as the head alone, it comes in a small, neat black cardboard package with Ikon labelling
It's a "torqued blade" design, but, unlike the stainless Ikon slant, the blade loads easily and I haven't had to mess about with blade alignment. The scalloped safety bars are different on each side. One is coarse, with 10 scallops, and the other fine, with 15 scallops. I presume the purpose is to make one side more "efficient" than the other. In my use, I couldn't feel much difference, but I wasn't paying that much attention to which side was in use and when. I will in future.
The head, which continues my preferred design and keeps the blade tab ends within the razor head, has a thinner top cap than the Ikon stainless. The curvature of cap and base is slightly less i.e. the blade lies a tad flatter.
I used an 85mm stainless bamboo handle, a yellow Gillette, and Razorock Tobacco #1 soap. The razor shaves smoothly, and there is little audible feedback. I'm not that keen on razors which shout "I'm aggressive", and much prefer ones which do the job efficiently rather than brutally. This head is exactly that. In my personal ratings of "modern" slants, I'd set this at about even with ATT S1/2 and the Shavecraft 102, and more efficient than the Ikon stainless or IB Stealth V4. I don't have a Merkur 37C or 39C, so can't compare it with them.
The head is, like the 102, a matt aluminium casting, and looks clean and precise. Oddly, my other Shavecraft aluminium heads have "Ikon" or similar cast into the bottom of the baseplate, but this has no name at all. When supplied as the head alone, it comes in a small, neat black cardboard package with Ikon labelling
It's a "torqued blade" design, but, unlike the stainless Ikon slant, the blade loads easily and I haven't had to mess about with blade alignment. The scalloped safety bars are different on each side. One is coarse, with 10 scallops, and the other fine, with 15 scallops. I presume the purpose is to make one side more "efficient" than the other. In my use, I couldn't feel much difference, but I wasn't paying that much attention to which side was in use and when. I will in future.
The head, which continues my preferred design and keeps the blade tab ends within the razor head, has a thinner top cap than the Ikon stainless. The curvature of cap and base is slightly less i.e. the blade lies a tad flatter.
I used an 85mm stainless bamboo handle, a yellow Gillette, and Razorock Tobacco #1 soap. The razor shaves smoothly, and there is little audible feedback. I'm not that keen on razors which shout "I'm aggressive", and much prefer ones which do the job efficiently rather than brutally. This head is exactly that. In my personal ratings of "modern" slants, I'd set this at about even with ATT S1/2 and the Shavecraft 102, and more efficient than the Ikon stainless or IB Stealth V4. I don't have a Merkur 37C or 39C, so can't compare it with them.