Makes sense, Steve. Life's not all about money. I could see myself doing projects just for the fun of it in my spare time. Maybe learn woodworking and build furniture. I'd love to rebuild these Webers and give them as gifts if I thought my friends would appreciate them. Unfortunately, people seem to want new, shiny stainless above all. If it's thin as a few sheets of paper, they don't particularly notice. Perhaps that will change. Perhaps we're at the vanguard and these beautiful old grills will be valued again. That's happened to a large degree with old razors. I collect them. There was a time when they were so worthless they just got thrown out. Now some of those very same razors sell for significant money. These days there are artisans, guys like Dave Santana who are well known in the razor world, who make beautiful new razors that are precise like machine tools or surgical instruments and beautiful like jewelry.
Here are some examples of razors made to exacting standards from 316 stainless by a guy named James Dufour:
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A guy named Brian Twilley makes them from brass, copper and stainless. I have this one, made of copper over brass. Paid $300 for it a number of years ago. God only knows what it sells for now. Needs to be polished unless one appreciates a patina, as do I. Either way, it shaves great.
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And then here's my most special razor. Found it accidentally in an antique store in Seattle one night while there for a professional conference. Wandered in just before closing. Saw this thing and bargained the owner down from $25 to $20, tax inclusive. So he charged me $18 and change plus tax so it would come to $20 total. For me it was just a fluke. Something I would try and then likely throw in a drawer where most of my 75 or so razors live. Then I shaved with it and was amazed. So I did some research and discovered it was a Mark Cross razor, manufactured just one year, 1912. At the time it was 106 years old. Now it's 110. This thing is triple plated in silver over brass. It sold for 25 cents back then. It was a loss leader for the Mark Cross Company (which is still around -- ask your wife) hoped to make up selling blades -- a formula that made King Gillette and Colonel Jacob Schick, a returning WWI veteran, incredibly wealthy. Didn't work for Mark Cross but they built a fortune selling high end leather goods. Expensive stuff for women.
The guy who designed this razor was Gerald Murphy. He bought the company from Mark Cross but kept the name. Gerald and his wife, Sarah, were major figures of the lost generation of literary fame. They were like parents to F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Earnest and Mary Hemingway and many others. They essentially discovered the French Riviera for the expat crowd and transformed it from a series of tiny fishing villages to the playground of the rich it is now, though they didn't much like the way it developed. When they were there, it was quiet and tranquil. They cleared the first beach of seaweed for swimming and sunbathing.
Everyone eventually discovers his own special razor, typically refereed to as one's "grail". This is mine. I own a bunch of razors. This is the one I use most every day. Really, I only use three. This one four days a week. I don't shave over the weekend. On Monday, I use the Charcoal Goods razor to whack down three days beard growth. And if I should happen to go four or five days, I trot out another razor, my Ikon Tech -- which is made not by an artisan but by this crazy lunatic who designed it and had it built in China. He's a paranoid nut and no longer makes razors but the Tech is a modern timeless classic just the same.
Here's the Mark Cross:
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