The New Deluxe Strop

You may have noticed a few changes to our website and product offerings lately. Foremost among them is the new Deluxe Strop. 

Until recently, Portland Razor Co strops began with undyed and untreated veg-tanned cow side. We cut it to shape, dyed, oiled, and glass-burnished it all by hand before assembly. While this process assured the absolute highest standard of quality and performance in our strops, it was also very time-consuming.

In our pursuit of a better strop, we turned to the American tanneries from which we source our leather. Most of our leather comes from Hermann Oak Leather, a tannery which has been in business under several iterations since 1881! They turned us on to English bridle leather which has been treated and dyed in the English style, giving it an ultra-smooth consistency perfect for stropping. It is considered by many to be a superior strop leather and now we know why: it is supple and smooth with a light draw that breaks in well over time. 

Buying leather which has already been professionally treated and dyed at the tannery has a few key benefits. First, it is a huge time saver for us. Second, we find that more of the hide is free of troublesome blemishes, resulting in less waste. It has very similar characteristics to our original Deluxe Strop leather and can be further conditioned with neatsfoot oil. We will be rolling out new color options in the coming weeks!

English bridle leather is more expensive, but it looks great, saves time, and makes an exceptional and functional strop.  Taking all that into account, we knew that the only fair thing to do was offer the new English bridle strop at the same price as the original Deluxe Strop. Customers with outstanding strop orders will receive the new Deluxe Strop in English bridle leather, and customers who already have strops can purchase individual panels if they want to make the change. If you have any additional questions regarding the changes to our products, please feel free to email us.

The Year in Review!

I will start off by saying: thank you to everyone who is reading this. Without you guys, Portland Razor Co. would be a dream, and I would still be working in the corner of my garage wishing I could be making straight razors for a living.

Scott Miyako here from Portland Razor Co. I wanted to give a personal update on what's happening at PR these days, especially since April 7th marked our first full year as a business entity! This year has been exhilarating, stressful, rewarding... unforgettable. It's absolutely incredible how far we've come, from moving to Portland and starting the company in a little corner of ADX to having our own shop! I cannot begin to express my astonishment, pride, and gratitude for everything that's happened this past year. All I can say is: Thank You! Thank you for supporting American Makers and helping us become what we are today. The interest in our products and our company is astonishing, and it makes me truly happy to see how many people take their passion for straight shaving as seriously as I do. I have nothing but gratitude, especially for those people who reached out to us in our first year. Every email, comment, tweet, and shop visit has inspired real appreciation and makes all our hard work even more satisfying. Your support and enthusiasm has carried us through early mornings, late nights, and yes, even floods!

Back in December, our friend Matt at ADX connected us with STAY GOLD Studios. At the time, STAY GOLD was coming to Portland all the way from London to film an episode of their Makers series, and we had the good fortune of becoming one of the featured Makers in the series, which originally aired in the UK on Channel 4. I'd love to go into all the details of how cool it was to watch them work and how much fun we had that week with the STAY GOLD crew, but really, you should just watch the video:

It's funny to me now, seeing us work in that small space. We definitely miss our old home at ADX, but our new shop has afforded us a lot of new opportunities and helped us really maximize our potential.

Our early success has brought its fair share of growing pains. We are pretty heavily backordered at 2 months, and in reality, we are probably even a few weeks behind that projection. Luckily, Hunter has become a razor-making machine and is keeping us from completely drowning in backlog. Please know that we are all doing our best to rise to the challenge and are cranking out razors faster every day, and we will get to your razor in the order it was received as soon as is physically possible. 

As things are, the more orders we get, the more time I spend on customer service and emails, which leaves me less time to actually sit at a grinder and make razors. The reality of our ever-increasing list of orders will pull me away from the computer, and I apologize if my responses to your emails take longer or become less frequent. Because my main priority is making the best razors around and getting them to you in a timely fashion, please be open to someone other than myself responding to your questions and comments in the future. 

Additionally, to keep up with our growth we are now actively seeking additional makers interested in our craft, and hope to be training another apprentice in the coming months. This is a very exciting phase for us to be able to extend an invitation to someone else to join our shop family, and we are looking forward to meeting more talent in our community. We will start the search soon, so keep you eyes on the blog for more details.

Again, thank you for your incredible support through our first year in business. Here's to many more years to come!

New Location, Strop Design Update

New Location, Strop Design Update, and What's Coming in February

Moving In...

Portland Razor Co. has moved! We are now located at 211 SE Madison St. #3, right under the historic Hawthorne Bridge on the corner of SE 2nd and Madison. We are functional and still manufacturing razors, however we are somewhat limited while the space is being renovated. As you can see, despite being three times larger than our old one, we've already managed to fill the new shop! Please feel free to visit  and give us a call ahead if you can. We've really enjoyed getting to know the local straight shaving community and love getting to show people what we do!

We have also updated our strop design, changing out the traditional clip for a D-ring. This gives the user access to additional stropping surfaces.

We will be posting another update in February which will outline improvements we are making to our straight razor lineup, new products we are developing, and service updates for honing and more. Stay tuned!