The Kent of Inglewood 'Shave-Ready' Straight Razor Guarantee
When you buy a straight razor at Kent of Inglewood, we personally guarantee that it is “Shave-Ready”. That means that we have checked the edge, honed and stropped it if needed, and made sure it is 100% ready to shave with. Why?
Most straight razors are not sharp enough to shave with out of the box.
It sounds crazy, but it’s true, and it’s important to be aware of this when you purchase a straight razor. The razors that come from most manufacturers simply don’t have a keen enough edge to shave smoothly and comfortably.
This isn’t the fault of the razor makers. The folks that make your straight razor work incredibly hard to meet global demand. With the recent explosion in the popularity of straight razors, compared to decades of minimal interest, most factories were ill-equipped to meet the demand. While there are many steps that are essential to making a razor, honing is a relatively simple step for the end user to sort out.
Even without massive demand, straight razor making is a complicated process. The “honemeister” in a razor factory will hone tens, maybe hundreds of razors in a single shift. Not only is it extremely time consuming to get the razor from completely dull to perfectly smooth, but they test on synthetic hairs as no human would want to lose as much hair as it would take to test that many blades in a day.
As a result, every Kent of Inglewood employee puts in hours of practice to perfect their razor honing techniques and guarantee that your blade is shave-ready before it goes home with you. While many brands do an excellent job at sharpening your blade thoroughly, we like to be certain you can use it right out of the box before you take it home.
First, we unpack the razor, wipe down any protective oils, and then strop it. The blade is tested on our arm to check for two things: that the blade cuts hair effortlessly, and that it does not scrape the skin, which would cause irritation.
If the blade doesn’t perform as we’d expect we will treat it as necessary, often honing on a series of stones of different grits. Once we are completely satisfied with the results, we strop the razor, disinfect it, clean it thoroughly and pack it in its box again. At that point you can go home and shave straight away with your proud new blade! Also worth noting here, if you buy your blade from us, you are also entitled to a first-time free sharpening.
Have a razor that needs a tune-up? Visit one of our shops or check out our mail-in honing service! Typical honing costs $20 (+shipping). And if all this weren’t enough, we give half of the proceeds of our sharpening to a local charity every year, so you even get to feel good about helping us help our community.
Want to learn tune up your own razor? Get in touch with us about taking a honing class and browse our selection of sharpening stones here.
