I'm not saying you're wrong in an absolute sense -- there were so many straight razors made over the years, and the market now is so much smaller than it once was, it could very well be that the majority of them in the wild are non-stainless.Doc Dan wrote: ↑Fri Jan 13, 2023 9:36 amThere are a few places that make stainless razors, but they are not as popular as non-stainless razors. People say they can't see any difference in performance, but one maker I know says that the carbon steels are best. All of my razors are non-stainless. I will note, however, that 13C26/AEB-L are used in razor blades, so there's that.
But "popularity" is a tricky thing to pin down. Thiers and Dovo have both been making stainless for generations now. New budget-priced brands like Gold Dollar are almost exclusively stainless. I'd wager that, even for custom razors, stainless dominates. (Edit: unless we include pattern-welded "damascus", of course, which is the hilarious exception that proves the rule--there's nothing about pattern-welding that makes it better for a razor, the facts are very much to the contrary.)
If you've been collecting "vintage" razors, your favourites are almost certainly not stainless. I have a dozen or so, none newer than my grandfather's birthday.
But the right maker with the right experience could, I have no doubt, make a better razor than any of them out of common stainless. Factory-made razors have never been especially "high performance" by the standards we set as knife enthusiasts.
I wish you well on the collaboration, Doc. I wrote about razors for a publication briefly, and I've got to say I threw away more notes than I used when I was trying to cover the basics. We've invented (and in many cases already lost) more new barber/razor/honing lore in the past 20 years than in the history of civilization.
No matter what method/explanation of shaving you come up with, there'll be a dozen of us old pedants on the internet ready to correct/contradict every detail. That's fine; the important thing is not that people know the "one right way" but that they are encouraged to try it out and keep trying.