There’s a karma thing going on. I suspect that @whosgotthepudding’s Évidé Sonnant sings like crazy. Mine sings like a wedge. Same goes for edges. My Ralf Aust edges were only ever OK when new, but I just refreshed @oswald_heist’s 5/8 Ralf Aust and the condition of his edge after 25+ uses looked great (just stropped well), and still tested at a very comfortable sharpness level.
My guess is that there’s a little of “you get what you pay for” in this. I don’t know about TI, but Ralf Aust does an amazing job of producing great quality at a very affordable price point. And he is able to supply vendors with a good volume of product. To do this, there’s no way he can put the time and effort into each razor that Ulrik, at Koraat, does for his customs. So I would expect that, due to all the necessary hand work, there is variation in manufacturing tolerances for Austs, and perhaps this is true for other vendors who market more in volume. Perhaps most of the time errors compensate, but occasionally, they accumulate.
It might be a marketing nothing burger, then?
There’s a karma thing going on. I suspect that @whosgotthepudding’s Évidé Sonnant sings like crazy. Mine sings like a wedge. Same goes for edges. My Ralf Aust edges were only ever OK when new, but I just refreshed @oswald_heist’s 5/8 Ralf Aust and the condition of his edge after 25+ uses looked great (just stropped well), and still tested at a very comfortable sharpness level.
That’s odd 😅
I wonder whether this is the iffy QA which Brad Maggard mentioned
I wonder whether this is the iffy QA which the shopkeeper at Au Grand Rasoir mentioned
Maybe they were both correct?
My guess is that there’s a little of “you get what you pay for” in this. I don’t know about TI, but Ralf Aust does an amazing job of producing great quality at a very affordable price point. And he is able to supply vendors with a good volume of product. To do this, there’s no way he can put the time and effort into each razor that Ulrik, at Koraat, does for his customs. So I would expect that, due to all the necessary hand work, there is variation in manufacturing tolerances for Austs, and perhaps this is true for other vendors who market more in volume. Perhaps most of the time errors compensate, but occasionally, they accumulate.