The Vintage was Tossed:

Unfortunately I had to make a tough decision today and toss my vintage into the garbage. There's several reasons why I tossed it out today but the main was that it wouldn't hold an edge no matter who honed it. 3 people who have thousands of edges out there shaving have honed it several times and have honed the 2 Gold Dollar razors you see below. It all but butchered my face today and the ONLY reason it did not do that during today's shave was because I used an extremely good shaving soap today that has a lot of cushioning ability and more than enough slickness to help prevent this. But the crazy part is that I just got through performing a touch up on my honing stones 2 or 3 days ago and that razor shouldn't be trying to dig into your skin after that. Another thing is that I believe I know when that razor was made and I should have tossed it out sooner. It was made in between the late 1930's and early 1940's. During that time period, WW2 was going on and there was a shortage of certain metals because of it especially over in Sheffield, England. So in a pinch, they used other metals instead of what they would normally use and the end results are usually not good. That's the case here. Another reason was that unlike my Gold Dollars seen below, it chipped on me yet again during my usual stropping routine and I was ONLY using the weight of the blade as I do with ALL of my other razors. My Gold Dollars don't chip after I strop them and I do NOT have to pull out the stones after every use with them like I did with my vintage. I know it's NOT ME in terms of performing a touch up on the stones because I'm getting consistent results with my Gold Dollars. If it was me, I would NOT be getting good consistent results on any of my razors:

Here's the vintage's replacement:

Once it's properly honed, it will be in my rotation on a regular basis. Right now it's got a factory edge on it that's duller than a spoon is, and I'm in the process of getting some more stones to take this beast all the way to past shave ready and if you read my previous post, you would know that I have a new strop on the way as we speak. My vintage was basically a "pot metal" razor plain and simple. When even the most experienced hone meister's mentor puts and edge on that razor and it still doesn't hold an edge and chips on the first stroke during a normal stropping routine that I've done over a thousand times easy and never has a problem with stropping on my other razors, then yeah something is definitely wrong and it could only be the razor. I can't even tell you how many straight razor shaves I've done at this point. So that alone rules out any form learning curves period.