Cold water shave again using the black plastic scaled Dova Best. Before my shave soap order arrived in the mail I purchased Swedish Dream sea salt soap and Lightfoot's pure pine shaving soap locally at The Fellow Barber. First off just like the goole reviews stated niether of these soaps have a lather that lasts very long. They dry out quicker but this is something I can manage well by wetting and lathering up a portion of my face immediatly before shaving it.
The Swedish Dream (primarily a bathing soap but can be used for shaving) lathered up good enough for my standards and so long as you don't let it dry out it worked. The lather was thick but on the foamy side again it won't last as long as the D.R. Harris Arlington and the lather quality is nowhere as good but I still liked it better, in fact, I can say Swedish Dream is the only soap I actually enjoyed purely as a soap as it left no irritation, did not dry my skin out, and smelled mildly pleasant and unique. It actually left my skin feeling softer I can't recall any other soap like this.
Lightfoots pure pine soap did not lather as good and I found it unremarkable. It caused my skin to be slighty dry but nothing excessive, probably even less dryness than with the D.R. Harris. It was not a bad soap overall, it had a pleasant smell but lathering up requires a bit of patience and elbow grease. It also has a narrow range of how much water you can use, too much water and the lather is all liquid dribbles, too little water and you have the consistancy of a thin lather that is too stiff to shave well with and seems to evaporate quickly.
There was a little glitch. When I brought my Dovo "Best Quality"
budget razor I did so with the understanding that the plastic scales are prone to breaking. It is a well known problem that a simple google search will immediately bring to light. I figured I will handle this razor with extreme gentleness, even cheap scales will last under those conditions right ?
wrong the tip of the scale on one side where the pivot pin is broke off with absolutely no warning, not even an odd feel, right before my eyes while I was slowly and gently closing it
wow! I didn't know they were that cheap. I deliberately twisted and broke the scales some more after removing them from the Dovo Razor to get a feel for how strong they are. It was not easy those scales were very tough. I think these scales had a weak point/points that make them prone to breaking in that area/areas. There were no washers inside and the blade pivot area on both scales had a roughened portion that I am guessing is to provide some sort of traction to keep the blade from moving too easily. I wonder what methods were used to roughen this area and if it had anything to do with the scale breaking.
Replacement scales are hard to find but I managed to find some olivewood scales at the Superior Shave for about 40 bucks. I don't want to mess with Dovo plastic anymore. I may not use the olive wood scales because during the time I could not find replacements I made some scales myself from pex tubing that I split down the middle (two half circles.) I then went to make belive land and pretended I was mr. Stark forging a blade. I hammered the plastic semicircles flat on a short piece of cut railroad track that I use for a mini anvil. I have to say it takes a lot of hammering to flatten white pex tubing plastic. The tough flexible stuff never did get 100% flat despite about 1/2 hour of hammering, but it did get flat enough to cut scales out of. I used the old scales to trace a template and a huge pair of heavy duty scissors to do all my cutting that I am not supposed to do with scissors (maybe tin snips would have been better.) Drilling holes to put a pivot pin in (in my case a scanvenged cheap quality steel rod that pops out of a 1/8 inch rivet) and a blade tang post was easy enough. I used phospher bronze washers inside for the blade and outside to give my pean job some metal around it. Okay enough of the details in a nut shell centering this blade in those scales before putting the spacer in was a pain with a lot of trial and error. I managed to get it to the point where the blade slides in right next to the scale most of the time other times I have to flex it a little.
For some reason I have become attached to my cheap, crude, effective and really not bad looking work and am having trouble deciding whether to keep this one of a kind Dovo (art pure art) just the way I made it or put the new olive wood scales in. Does anyone know if pex plastic will eventually degrade and break or will it last as long as those other plastic scales from the 1920s.
