Karve Bison Stainless Steel: First Shave Impressions
Hey guys, welcome back to Long Island Shaving. Quick note upfront: this is take two of the intro. Recorded the whole thing, microphone wasn’t connected. So here we are again.
A razor came in the mail on loan from a good friend of the channel, Brett. Brett is the one who encouraged me to pick up the Overlander a few years back. You guys know I’ve talked about that story plenty of times here. My satin-finish stainless steel Overlander made my top 10 list not long ago and it’s one of my all-time favorites. So when Brett offered to loan me his Bison stainless steel before I potentially buy one, I jumped at it.
The Karve Bison Stainless Steel
Chris at Karve has been making the Bison in aluminum for a while. About six months ago he launched it in stainless steel for the first time. I’ve been wanting to try one, but something kept stopping me.
Every other week I’d see a stainless steel Bison pop up on BST, consistently going for around $200 to $210. That’s a lot of people moving the same razor. Is it that they don’t like it? Or is it that once they put it next to the Overlander, they realize they don’t need both? I wasn’t sure, so I called Brett.
He sent over his, and he went ahead and gave it a full polish before shipping. Both the Overlander and the Bison ship with a bead blasted matte finish from the factory. This one is a full mirror polish, and I’ll say it: Brett did a really nice job. The grooves in the top cap, the tight tolerances, the way it catches the light. Chris machines his razors to a very high standard. Looking at this thing, I think the Bison might actually be nicer looking than the Overlander, design-wise.
On paper, the two razors are extremely close. The Overlander has a blade gap of 0.73mm; the Bison is 0.71mm. Blade exposure is 0.07mm on the Overlander and 0.06mm on the Bison. The Overlander is also slightly heavier. Small differences. That’s exactly why people wonder if there’s a real reason to own both.
Soap Palooza Hellbent Cherry
I hadn’t used this one on the channel before, so it was a first for both the razor and the soap. Soap Palooza Hellbent Cherry is tallow-based. The notes are strawberry and banana up top, raspberry, jasmine, and cinnamon in the middle, and vanilla with a touch of smoke in the base. There’s no actual cherry in the formula. The name comes from the combination of those berry and floral notes together, which reads as cherry when you smell it.
Loading the brush, I got mostly cherry and smoke. Didn’t pick up the banana at all. Maybe a little cinnamon in the background, but it’s subtle. The smoke isn’t heavy. It’s more of an accent behind the fruit, and the vanilla in the base comes through as a soft sweetness underneath. I was a little worried about the banana because I didn’t want it front and center. It’s not. I also have the matching splash and I was curious whether the banana would show up more there. We’ll find out.
I matched the brush to the soap, going with my Grizzly Bay black and red. Felt right.
First Shave Impressions
I went in with about 24 hours of growth, so this is a standard daily-shave test.
The first pass felt very similar to the Overlander. Mild, comfortable, not a lot of blade feel. That’s what the Overlander is known for, and I always figured the Bison would land in the same neighborhood. Now that I’ve had it on my face, I’d say it’s maybe just a hair milder. On paper it should be, given the slightly tighter specs, and that checks out in practice.
The against-the-grain pass was also smooth. One note: I felt some blade chatter on my chin. I’ll own that. The angle was off. User error, not the razor. I had just called this thing mild and then nicked myself on the very next pass. Funny how that works.
My initial read: a touch milder than the Overlander. Slightly. For someone with sensitive skin who shaves every day for work, that’s actually a good thing. You can run this razor on autopilot. It’s not anywhere close to the Blackbird or the Carbon, which are in my top three. Those are a different category entirely. The Bison is the razor you reach for when your skin needs a break.
My Take
If you have sensitive skin and shave daily, the Bison stainless steel would be a great razor to have in the den. Comfortable, forgiving, you don’t have to think much about angle or pressure.
If you already own the Overlander, I don’t think there’s enough daylight between them to justify buying both. That’s probably what’s driving all the BST listings. It’s not that the razor is bad. It’s that it performs very close to what you already have. Is it nicer looking? I think so. Is that enough on its own? Only you can answer that.
I want to come back to these two with a few days of growth and do a proper side-by-side. One pass with 24 hours of stubble doesn’t tell the whole story. The differences, if any, will probably show up more clearly with a heavier beard.
Big thanks to Brett for sending this over and for the work he did on that polish. And if you’ve got the Bison stainless steel in your den, drop a comment below. I’d love to hear how you compare it to the Overlander. Thanks for watching, guys.