[RobertFontaine]

Jon Enstrom
Eskiltuna
Frameback
4/8"
With a sway back and a smile

Honed and sent to me by JMS




I have been remiss in not following up with this. JMS sent me this little wonder as a sample of his honing to look at in my little radioshack microscope. Before I did I stropped it and have a a shave.

I only have a few things to compare it to but I will try my best.

Well the edge was definitely sharp and it was consistent throughout. The fine grind certainly lets you hear the hair being cut more than a heavy grind and the light weight gives more feedback when cutting.

I thought the smile might be a challenge but it stropped and shaved consistently. My Butcher is a little tougher to maneuver with it's smile.

The edge was similar to a wapi when I use .25 micron diamond paste only the wapis edge crumples after 2 shave with that fine an edge so I backed off to .5 micron chromium to finish.

The bevel is remarkably tiny on this little razor compared to the butchers and wapi's I've been playing with.

The light weight and little blade is a lot more demanding of technique than I am used to so although I got a close shave I wouldn't call it a nice shave. I've got a bit of razor burn this morning.

I had a tendency to change the angle of attack quite a bit. The heavier blades give me more visual and physical feedback.

So I finally got a chance to look at the edge this evening after ignoring the little blade for a couple of weeks. Not surprisingly the blade looks similar to how it feels. Extremely smooth and consistent. There are a couple of spots where the edge looks to be a tiny bit overhones when I look at it at 100X but I doubt it is noticeable to shave with. These little swedish blades use nice steel.

I've avoided putting this blade into my rotation until I looked at it under the microscope. I think I'm going to add it to my rotation more because it makes me concentrate on the angle of attack more than my other blades. I don't think I would purposely buy such a small blade but I'd be pleased to see this quality of steel in the bigger ones.


I'm going to hone it it up tonight and see if I can't make it a little smoother rather than trying to make it sharper.

-Bob