Nice Rolls imperial No2 aquisition

osdset

osdset

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115
Won This on the bay on Wednesday arrived this morning, beautiful condition, the fitted strop and hone are A1, included were two spare strop leathers (unused) , two spare hones (unused), one spare blade, spare blade clip, and a leather case to boot! I have been waiting for a nice one to come up for a while, and for £7.81 I think I got a bargain
 
I tried the Rolls out yesterday, gave the blade 30 up and down the hone, and as it says in the instructions I gave the blade a brisk stropping (sounds almost rude), was in a bit of a hurry so a quick two pass shave was in order, and I was quite surprised at the shave, not bad at all the upper lip was a bit of a challenge though due to the width of the blade and I found that the guard bar got in the way somewhat, I usually have a bit of trouble shaving the neck area under the chin with a straight, but this little razor had no problems dealing with that. So it's a half decent shaver 'out of the box' I reckon a touch up on a finishing hone would really bring the blade to life.

I took it to my local yesterday to show an old chap that had one back in the forties, and it became quite the talking point, apart from myself and the old boy no one else had ever heard of a Rolls let alone seen one, I've now been asked to procure two sets!
 
Jealous. Looks like a really good buy. Unfortunately the noise that it makes drives people mad in the morning so I hardly use mine any more, its a shame cause they shave really well. I think I've got about 5 blades in different states and two or three complete Rolls I gave the best one to my dad and when he uses it he really likes it.

If you fancy a bit of danger, you can always pop the blade guard off, its there to protect it when you place it down rather than youe face.

Regarding honing, I always find that gently putting the blade on the stone will prevent it from getting a low spot from "slapping" all the time
 
I used one yesterday too, I have previously honed the blade on a coticule but it was alway only "half decent" as you say I reckoned that it was the stropping which was letting it down. However, yesterday I replaces the leather on one strop and put Crox on a spare one. After some work on the Crox and stropping one some fresh leather of the refurbished strop the edge was great, popping hair on the HHT ( having flipped the safety bar off) the shave was every bit as good as I get from an of my straights, in fact better as the angle of the handle makes it easier to get some bits on my neck.

As far as the nose goes I just push it to one side as Manitc shoes in his clips for DE shaving.
 
Its worth pointing out that poor stropping can also be a factor of the mechanism being dirty, there is a good strip down and rebuild tutorial that I think I posted in the another Rolls thread.

Anyway it is here just in case http://theshaveden.com/forums/threads/the-what-is-and-how-to-thread-for-the-rolls-razor.22371/
 
al_kaholik said:
Its worth pointing out that poor stropping can also be a factor of the mechanism being dirty, there is a good strip down and rebuild tutorial that I think I posted in the another Rolls thread.

Anyway it is here just in case http://theshaveden.com/forums/threads/the-what-is-and-how-to-thread-for-the-rolls-razor.22371/
Click to expand...
Thanks for the link to that tutorial on the strip down and rebuild, it might come in handy, I find the mechanism quite stiff, that may be due to not much use, or as the tutorial mentioned old grease on the gears, from what I have observed it seems to be the bar that has the gear ends on that sits in the tube that's causing some friction, there is some rubbing going on that would benefit from maybe a light oil.
I had a good look at the spare blade this morning, some superficial rust and Devil spit, I gave the blade a good clean and gave the edge a once over with a loupe, cheese grater! A fair few laps on a 1K and the edge was coming together, but the bevel is getting a bit too big for my liking and there are still a couple of micro chips, I may just leave it at that, it's a spare after all.
 
Taking off the friction clip assembly and cleaning the black off the bakelite liner shuold help with it, also doing the gears helps. I cleaned mine in about an hour. Just be careful putting it all back together, some light grease on the gears and you will be away
 
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