Lately, I have been getting very good shaves from many DE razors, yet a great shave from the Gem razors was still eluding me. I built up a small collection of Gem razors, thinking that if I get most of the gem razors. I’ll be able to get a good shave from at least one of them.
I am first going to start with some of my less successful taming attempts in the order that I attempted to tame these gem razors, leading up to my greatest success.
I think I prefer the 1912s, as I kept returning to the 1912s, neglecting most of the other gems. While doing research on how to shave with the gem razors, I came upon a trick in which people place a removed spine from a gem blade and place that spine underneath the current blade’s spine. This lifts the back of the blade a bit, tilting the blade down, and taming the gem razors a bit. Instead of using a removed spine, I cut a small piece of a 1mm thick magnetic sheet, to about the same size as the gem spines. I found the magnetic sheets more convenient to use as the magnetic strip holds onto the blade and keeps their place a little better than the remove spine. Also, if I want, I could double or triple up the magnetic sheets lifting the blade 2 or 3mm.
Using the magnetic sheet to lift the blade made the gem Junior usable for me but not optimal. Using the 1912 unmodified is unusable to me. I cannot get a good shave with the unmodified 1912s as it bites me and scrapes my skin raw. When shaving with the spine lifting trick, I can get a close shave, but the shave is still a little too aggressive for me as my skin ends up feeling raw in some places and ended up with a few cuts.
There is a lot of talk on the DE section of this form of blade rigidity. I initially thought that the gem razors with their thicker blades will have no rigidity problem. These 1912 razors, however, have a huge rigidity problem because the blade hangs over the open comb, supported only at its two ends. If one pushes down on these blades towards the bevel, one will realize how wobbly these gem blades are while in the 1912s.
After trying multiple ways to fill the gap, I almost succeeded by making a mold out of epoxy putty.
This epoxy putty mold was not perfect and was hard to get the blade in place while using this mold. The mold caused the blade to frown where the center of the blade was higher than the ends. Yet the mold gave the blade re-rigidity and I tried a shave. The blade I tried to shave with may have been dull, and I did not get a good shave with the epoxy putty mold trick. I would say the shave was like the lifting the spine trick, but I will have to test it again to know, which I’m probably not going to do. Yet if one gets a proper mold, this mold trick might work.
The next thing I tried was sticking a stainless steel thin rod into the indentations of the guard. I have a stainless steel pet comb in which the teeth looked like it would fit perfectly into the 1912’s teeth indentation. I pulled one of the stainless rods from the dog combs out of the comb to see if this thin stainless rod can do the trick. For my first try I did not get this thin stainless rod to fit into the 1912’s, but if it perfectly into the 1914s.
have not tried a complete shave with these 1914s supported with this thin metal rod, but I gave it a little test and the razor felt quite effective and aggressive, and probably bite a little less than the unmodified version but for my current taste it’s probably still a bit too aggressive.
A brilliant idea came upon me right after placing the rod into the razor. I thought, why not try to push the blade into the guard, instead of trying to fill up the guard? I took a thin magnetic strip and placed it on the blade near the clapping point of the blade and the cap. Like this, the cap will push the blade further down. If you look closely at this picture, you may notice the blade is hovering on top of the open Combs and pressed up against the blade stop.
Here is a picture of how the blade looks once I closed the cap. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the blade is now forming a smile where the edges are higher than the center. The center of the blade is now pushed down against the guard and the edges are no longer pushed up against the blade stops. The higher edges of the 1912 prevent pushing the blade down further at the edges.
With this setup, the blade was quite rigid and running the razor over my fingers felt like the setup might shave while being super mild, so onto the test shave. At first, the shave felt super mild but was not cutting my hair properly. Before dismissing the set up I realized I used the current blade two or three times before and tested with it as well, so the blade might be dull. I put in a fresh blade and continued to shave.
All I can say is wow, this 1912 with the fresh blade was so soft on my face that I almost can’t hurt myself unless I tried really hard. It cut through my stubble really easily, even in my tough spots. With DE razors, I’m getting extremely smooth shaves lately, but I’m still struggling to cut the stubble on my chin and part of my neck area. This mild gem set up just cut through those areas with ease, but may be a little too mild for some as I have gotten closer shaves.
Just for thoroughness, another method that I have tested is shimming the blade with a second blade, which seems to have some positive effect as well. I also sanded down the corners of the cap, as some of my previous gem shaves I felt minor scratches I thought may come from the corner of the blade. But the scratches were more likely to have been coming from the corner of the cap. I don’t know if sanding down the corners of the cap did anything, but today’s shave felt super soft and there were no scratches.
This method of using a small thin piece of something, which I used a cut piece of a 1mm thick magnet sheet. Others may use sheet-metal or plastic. A thickness of 1 mm or less is probably ideal; thicker sheets hold the cap higher, which can affect the shave.
This trick appears to work on the old style open comb gems. This trick will not work on the newer gem razors. Most of the newer gem razors have fairly good blade support and don’t need this trick. All the gem razors after the bullettip, including the MMOC, have good blade support (the clogproof is the oddball out, which has average blade rigidity). The only way I currently know of taming the MMOC is by using the spine lifting trick. The bullettip has one extra bar of support when comparing the bullettip to the clogproof. For the clogproof, one may try to shim the blades in order to give the blade more support, but one is probably better off using the better supported bullettip. Using the spine lifting trick on these later milder gem razors seems to make the razor a little too mild where they don’t cut whiskers anymore.
Anyway, if you have any other tricks, please share. I figured I’ll share what I’ve learned in how to tame the 1912 and get a smooth, close shave from the 1912s.
I am first going to start with some of my less successful taming attempts in the order that I attempted to tame these gem razors, leading up to my greatest success.
I think I prefer the 1912s, as I kept returning to the 1912s, neglecting most of the other gems. While doing research on how to shave with the gem razors, I came upon a trick in which people place a removed spine from a gem blade and place that spine underneath the current blade’s spine. This lifts the back of the blade a bit, tilting the blade down, and taming the gem razors a bit. Instead of using a removed spine, I cut a small piece of a 1mm thick magnetic sheet, to about the same size as the gem spines. I found the magnetic sheets more convenient to use as the magnetic strip holds onto the blade and keeps their place a little better than the remove spine. Also, if I want, I could double or triple up the magnetic sheets lifting the blade 2 or 3mm.
Using the magnetic sheet to lift the blade made the gem Junior usable for me but not optimal. Using the 1912 unmodified is unusable to me. I cannot get a good shave with the unmodified 1912s as it bites me and scrapes my skin raw. When shaving with the spine lifting trick, I can get a close shave, but the shave is still a little too aggressive for me as my skin ends up feeling raw in some places and ended up with a few cuts.
There is a lot of talk on the DE section of this form of blade rigidity. I initially thought that the gem razors with their thicker blades will have no rigidity problem. These 1912 razors, however, have a huge rigidity problem because the blade hangs over the open comb, supported only at its two ends. If one pushes down on these blades towards the bevel, one will realize how wobbly these gem blades are while in the 1912s.
After trying multiple ways to fill the gap, I almost succeeded by making a mold out of epoxy putty.
This epoxy putty mold was not perfect and was hard to get the blade in place while using this mold. The mold caused the blade to frown where the center of the blade was higher than the ends. Yet the mold gave the blade re-rigidity and I tried a shave. The blade I tried to shave with may have been dull, and I did not get a good shave with the epoxy putty mold trick. I would say the shave was like the lifting the spine trick, but I will have to test it again to know, which I’m probably not going to do. Yet if one gets a proper mold, this mold trick might work.
The next thing I tried was sticking a stainless steel thin rod into the indentations of the guard. I have a stainless steel pet comb in which the teeth looked like it would fit perfectly into the 1912’s teeth indentation. I pulled one of the stainless rods from the dog combs out of the comb to see if this thin stainless rod can do the trick. For my first try I did not get this thin stainless rod to fit into the 1912’s, but if it perfectly into the 1914s.
have not tried a complete shave with these 1914s supported with this thin metal rod, but I gave it a little test and the razor felt quite effective and aggressive, and probably bite a little less than the unmodified version but for my current taste it’s probably still a bit too aggressive.
A brilliant idea came upon me right after placing the rod into the razor. I thought, why not try to push the blade into the guard, instead of trying to fill up the guard? I took a thin magnetic strip and placed it on the blade near the clapping point of the blade and the cap. Like this, the cap will push the blade further down. If you look closely at this picture, you may notice the blade is hovering on top of the open Combs and pressed up against the blade stop.
Here is a picture of how the blade looks once I closed the cap. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the blade is now forming a smile where the edges are higher than the center. The center of the blade is now pushed down against the guard and the edges are no longer pushed up against the blade stops. The higher edges of the 1912 prevent pushing the blade down further at the edges.
With this setup, the blade was quite rigid and running the razor over my fingers felt like the setup might shave while being super mild, so onto the test shave. At first, the shave felt super mild but was not cutting my hair properly. Before dismissing the set up I realized I used the current blade two or three times before and tested with it as well, so the blade might be dull. I put in a fresh blade and continued to shave.
All I can say is wow, this 1912 with the fresh blade was so soft on my face that I almost can’t hurt myself unless I tried really hard. It cut through my stubble really easily, even in my tough spots. With DE razors, I’m getting extremely smooth shaves lately, but I’m still struggling to cut the stubble on my chin and part of my neck area. This mild gem set up just cut through those areas with ease, but may be a little too mild for some as I have gotten closer shaves.
Just for thoroughness, another method that I have tested is shimming the blade with a second blade, which seems to have some positive effect as well. I also sanded down the corners of the cap, as some of my previous gem shaves I felt minor scratches I thought may come from the corner of the blade. But the scratches were more likely to have been coming from the corner of the cap. I don’t know if sanding down the corners of the cap did anything, but today’s shave felt super soft and there were no scratches.
This method of using a small thin piece of something, which I used a cut piece of a 1mm thick magnet sheet. Others may use sheet-metal or plastic. A thickness of 1 mm or less is probably ideal; thicker sheets hold the cap higher, which can affect the shave.
This trick appears to work on the old style open comb gems. This trick will not work on the newer gem razors. Most of the newer gem razors have fairly good blade support and don’t need this trick. All the gem razors after the bullettip, including the MMOC, have good blade support (the clogproof is the oddball out, which has average blade rigidity). The only way I currently know of taming the MMOC is by using the spine lifting trick. The bullettip has one extra bar of support when comparing the bullettip to the clogproof. For the clogproof, one may try to shim the blades in order to give the blade more support, but one is probably better off using the better supported bullettip. Using the spine lifting trick on these later milder gem razors seems to make the razor a little too mild where they don’t cut whiskers anymore.
Anyway, if you have any other tricks, please share. I figured I’ll share what I’ve learned in how to tame the 1912 and get a smooth, close shave from the 1912s.