The Haul October 2024

October has been a bumper crop (for me) in hobby purchases, thanks mostly to the International pipe show, but that's a topic for another post; this haul is actually shaving related.

Backstory, I made a large purchase from a store and had to return the item. Per their policy, in store credit was issued. This dismayed me, as they rarely carry things I'm interested in, but I stop in and browse from time to time.

Imagine my surprise when I spotted a Zeiss 10X D40 loupe for sale in one of their cases. Having little else to spend the credit on, this wasn't a hard choice. The real shocker was that the pawn shop hadn't nabbed it for their own use. The 'cheap' looking plastic housing probably threw them off.

I already had a 'good' loupe. A vintage Ruper, made in Japan. It's about twice as good as the $2 loupes from China. The Zeiss is better. The coatings correct color, enhance brightness, and crucially for razor honers, reduce glare. That puts it a step above other high end loupes like Nikon or B&L, in my opinion. (They also have coatings and stuff. Good loupes, for looking at other stuff than razor edges. The anti-glare coating on the Zeiss is just that little bit better).

The reason for the plastic housing is it offers better shock resistance and temperature expansion resistance. ...still makes it look and feel cheap though.

There's a post on B&B where a fellow rubber bands one of these $100+ Zeiss loupes to the back of his phone for macro shots, and someone called it the "low budget option," as opposed to the $15 phone macro kits you can buy, I suppose. It got a chuckle out of me, at least, and I can see myself doing the same at some point.

Would I have bought it with actual cash? Probably not. Do I regret buying it? Certainly not, and having used it, I wish I'd upgraded long ago.

Edit: the occasional straight razor honer may read this and think, "Do I need this!?" and the answer is "probably not." A $2 loupe from China will show you the same things. The biggest difference is the speed with which you will find defects. I really need to do a stand alone thread going into this. Lol.