I'm a great fan of the Rolls razor and love not only its clever design but also the amazing shaves that a well honed blade will give with it.
I'd heard talk of a Darwin SE with a similar mechanism and had honed a Darwin blade for someone else. Then I was impressed by how good the steel was but didn't dream I'd ever own one...
...until recently when I traded my rarely used Durham Dorset for a lovely Darwin Deluxe SE set!
The Rolls is certainly a clever piece of design but the Darwin is a masterpiece of British instrument making:
The heavy bulldog handle has a screw thread which attaches to the blade holder frame in two ways - in line for storage and perpendicular for shaving.
And in a stroke of genius the handle also screws into the side of the blade making it easy to hone and allowing the blade to be inserted and withdrawn in the stropping mechanism and frame without having to touch it.
The blade has a small grub screw in its centre and adjusting this screw alters the blade gap in the spring loaded frame, and consequently the aggressiveness of the razor.
And the tiny screwdriver necessary for this adjustment is stored in the base of the handle.
The stropping mechanism is similar to the Rolls in both action (you pull the end of the case in and out) and sound, but the blade clips in to a holder so there no potentially damaging spike like the Rolls.
And there's no hone - instead there's a two sided strop, fine for daily maintenance and coarse for touching up the edge when necessary.
The strop can be slid out and reversed by releasing a clip at the end of the case.
I pasted my strop with feox for daily use and 0.25u diamond for touch ups and, as with the Rolls, this works very well.
There's a spare blade holder in the lid of the case and the two blades that came with my set both had feathered edges so it took a lot of work to get to the good steel, but it was certainly worth the effort and the way the handle inserts into the side of the blades made honing them very easy.
After setting the bevel on a coarse synthetic, I took the blades through a progression of Welsh slates then finished on 0.3u lapping film before stropping in the case, first on diamond and then on feox.
With the blade mounted in the frame, the Darwin looks like it comes from another planet.
And how does it shave?
Set on maximum blade gap, the end result was very similar to the Rolls, i.e. magnificent, but the more developed blade guard and heavy chunky handle made for a much smoother shaving experience.
What a great razor :)
I want the world to know I'm shaving with the Darwin today!
I'd heard talk of a Darwin SE with a similar mechanism and had honed a Darwin blade for someone else. Then I was impressed by how good the steel was but didn't dream I'd ever own one...
...until recently when I traded my rarely used Durham Dorset for a lovely Darwin Deluxe SE set!
The Rolls is certainly a clever piece of design but the Darwin is a masterpiece of British instrument making:
The heavy bulldog handle has a screw thread which attaches to the blade holder frame in two ways - in line for storage and perpendicular for shaving.
And in a stroke of genius the handle also screws into the side of the blade making it easy to hone and allowing the blade to be inserted and withdrawn in the stropping mechanism and frame without having to touch it.
The blade has a small grub screw in its centre and adjusting this screw alters the blade gap in the spring loaded frame, and consequently the aggressiveness of the razor.
And the tiny screwdriver necessary for this adjustment is stored in the base of the handle.
The stropping mechanism is similar to the Rolls in both action (you pull the end of the case in and out) and sound, but the blade clips in to a holder so there no potentially damaging spike like the Rolls.
And there's no hone - instead there's a two sided strop, fine for daily maintenance and coarse for touching up the edge when necessary.
The strop can be slid out and reversed by releasing a clip at the end of the case.
I pasted my strop with feox for daily use and 0.25u diamond for touch ups and, as with the Rolls, this works very well.
There's a spare blade holder in the lid of the case and the two blades that came with my set both had feathered edges so it took a lot of work to get to the good steel, but it was certainly worth the effort and the way the handle inserts into the side of the blades made honing them very easy.
After setting the bevel on a coarse synthetic, I took the blades through a progression of Welsh slates then finished on 0.3u lapping film before stropping in the case, first on diamond and then on feox.
With the blade mounted in the frame, the Darwin looks like it comes from another planet.
And how does it shave?
Set on maximum blade gap, the end result was very similar to the Rolls, i.e. magnificent, but the more developed blade guard and heavy chunky handle made for a much smoother shaving experience.
What a great razor :)
I want the world to know I'm shaving with the Darwin today!
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