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Wanton destruction

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romsitsa

I’ll show you a heartbreaking mod that will give you nightmares. Here is picture 1. Everything ok so far, right?

It’s a uniqe double ring, nothing wrong with it. It can be converted back anytime to “normal”, but, imho, repairing it would destroy someones ingenuity.
 

EclipseRedRing

I smell like a Christmas pudding
It’s a uniqe double ring, nothing wrong with it. It can be converted back anytime to “normal”, but, imho, repairing it would destroy someones ingenuity.
What you say is true, but I know which type of double ring I would prefer to find in my local antique shop and it is not one which has been modified or repaired. To each his own 👍
 
If you feel that any modifications you make to any razor you own or have been asked to modify by others would be an extremely rare or valuable variant, then you should do whatever you like, that is your prerogative...
I don't consider a 'slant' to have any intrinsic value over a non-slant razor. Any value added to a razor that has undergone a slant process is only in the eyes of the person having it done. I charge $10 to do it, because that is what my time and the packing materials are worth. History will bear witness as to whether those razors will gain or lose value from this process.

As for rarity. One Gillette slant exists in the whole world at this moment in time. It's a brass open comb, left handed slant. If it had been made by Gillette a hundred years ago, today it's value would be astronomical. Tomorrow, there will be two.

If you are asking if I would 'slantify' a NOS one, or a sterling tiffany version?
Yes.

I would strongly discourage anyone from doing so because of the rarity of those razors, but it's that person's choice, and I'll respect that.

I won't slant an engraved or rhodium plated one. The process would damage the engravings, and rhodium is brittle, I fear the process would cause the plating to flake off.
 
Oops, I did it again.
comica1596015746746.jpg

The teeth rippled one of the edges of the top cap slightly, so in the future I should probably do the german "old type" razors with a dulled blade or two installed to prevent this from happening again. Alternatively, I could watch the pressure a bit better. These bend fairly easily.

My razor, my choice. I rarely used it before, and now it will join my regular rotation, or at the least, be a permanent addition to my dopp bag.
 
Can't it be done seperately?
Not with this fixture design. The head and baseplate must be mated together. Otherwise there will be blade alignment issues. It keeps the torsion twist the same between the baseplate and top cap.

Honestly, I'd prefer to be doing this to a high quality modern production brass open comb razor. Too bad those don't exist. FYI, I don't consider Pearl or Fatip to be "high quality."
 
Hi,

Hmmm. I like the idea. I find Slants to be better shavers. But, I won't send my one Old Type. It was my Grandfather's and so worth a million dollars. ;) I had another one, but passed it on to another B&B member years ago. Oh, well.

If you want to hear a horror story, my Dad won a 1-5 early toggle at Thompson Speedway back when Gillette was just bringing them out. A promotional race and the razor was part of the winnings. But, it liked to pop open during shaving. Dad dumped it in a drawer and forgot about it. Until I began shaving, found it, and began using it. He spotted it and decided it was going to cut me up. So, he took it down to the machine shop and 'aligned' it - with a ball peen hammer.

This, rather than trying to figure out why it popped open and fix it. It was an old razor to him and not worth the effort to mess with. Junk, as it were. So, into the metal recycle drum it went.

And, cars. I still mess with racing, preferring old cars. Mostly Lotus racing cars with verifiable racing history. Run them in Vintage groups. Buy as scrap, fix, race, and sell. Many times they get wrecked. Again, for most of them. Sometimes they are beyond fixing again. But, the folks who do this love it. We don't get too worked up over it all.

One time I got a Lotus Seven Series One with a really junk Coventry Climax engine in it. I had a few surplus Godiva portable fire pumps around and guess what engine they had? Yeah. Easy fix there. It had an SCCA logbook, so I sold it it readily. It ran a few laps and - whack. Bent all to heck. Not fixable. It was given back to me and I salvaged a few bits and put the engine back into the fire pump.

These days, the fire pump is worth more than the car. So many made during the war, just about all of which were scrapped so their engines could be used in sports and racing cars. Lotus got their start doing exactly that. The pump is in a museum now in an exhibit of fighting fires during the Blitz.

I used to take that pump to car meets and show where so many car engines began their lives. Pump worked, so I'd draft a pond and show it off with an inch-and-a-half. It was fun, but then someone wanted it for a museum and I gave it away.

Stan
 
This is fascinating. It kind of blows my mind that it actually works. I guess I can see the metal itself being malleable enough, but I'd think that the electroplating would buckle/flake/otherwise be destroyed.
 
What makes me mad is seeing fine razors sitting unused in somebody's ahem "den". I couldn't care less how they are used as long as they are. There are people who object to my no razor is safe frankenrazoring , and all I can say is get a life. I can indeed appreciate all that the perpetrators of this minor miracle continue to contribute to the hobby and I'm sending them a razor for elective surgery this weekend..

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk
All my razors (vintage or modern) have been used, at least once. Some don't merit a repeat use. I've got loads of vintage razors I shave with regularly of various brand names and countries.
 
It’s a uniqe double ring, nothing wrong with it. It can be converted back anytime to “normal”, but, imho, repairing it would destroy someones ingenuity.

If repaired/replaced, it wouldn’t be the original baseplate that was assembled with it and would come from a later SR so I decided against it. Can’t imagine it would be too easy either.

It does shave well, but I prefer the smoothness of my other OT baseplates.
 
This is fascinating. It kind of blows my mind that it actually works. I guess I can see the metal itself being malleable enough, but I'd think that the electroplating would buckle/flake/otherwise be destroyed.
Nope. But that's why I won't touch a rhodium plated razor. Rhodium's too hard and brittle, and I worry that half the plating would fall off the razor, so anyone who has a replated old type in rhodium can breathe a sigh of relief. Their razor is safe from me. On the other hand, according to this thread, they've probably already "destroyed" the razor by replating it, so I guess it's a wash overall.

Chrome, nickel, gold, silver, all okay. Those can be bent.
 
All my razors (vintage or modern) have been used, at least once. Some don't merit a repeat use. I've got loads of vintage razors I shave with regularly of various brand names and countries.
Yeah it's always tough when you get a cheap razor which you don't care for. I have a bunch that I don't like but are hardly worth the trouble trying to pass on to somebody else.

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I have been looking for a while for a 1950s Gillette ball-end Tech with a solid etched logo on the head to replace the heirloom one of my late Dad's l gave to my #1 son. Scarce as hen's teeth to get one that even has a faded logo etched on it @ a reasonable price l have noticed when l look for a new to me Tech on the 'Bay, eh? Anything that looks O.K. seems WAY $$$ too rich for me at this moment to pull the trigger on.

I have a X4 (1952?) in chrome. Made in Canada and in really nice shape with a great etched logo. Wasn’t planning to sell/trade it, but IM me if you want to discuss as I rarely use it.
 
I have a X4 (1952?) in chrome. Made in Canada and in really nice shape with a great etched logo. Wasn’t planning to sell/trade it, but IM me if you want to discuss as I rarely use it.
Good on you. I too have one I will never use. NDC as Sharpie B has offered first. I will be your backup.
 

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...I don't think we're going to see a sudden rash of people turning old Gillette's into slants. Frankly, it's still an old Gillette and there are much better slants out there purpose-made to be such...
I agree with you on both counts, as it happens.

There may be better slants out there, and I'm sure there are. The Valencia for sure is much higher quality than Gillette's standard razor offerings. I am also equally sure that most, if not all, the people who choose to turn a vintage razor into a slant will find that it improves the shaving properties of the razor. Whether it makes it better than existing slants, I will leave that judgement to the end user.

Slants are not and have never been my wheelhouse. My previous experience with a slant (other than the aforementioned Valencia), was a vintage Hoffritz slant, which I loved the look of, but hated using. That was nearly 10 years ago. It could have been, and probably was, an issue with my technique. Whatever it was, I swore off all slants until I could find an open comb brass slant. Those used to be fairly rare. Vintage ones certainly still are.

@efsk has a wide knowledge of and much experience with slants, and he has said that the Valencia is one of the better slants out there, or words to that effect. Our bending jig is based on a Valencia's geometry, so the resulting slant should shave fairly identically.

In a side by side shave, I felt the slantified Cosmo was the better shaver, but that could just be me being a confirmation bias muppet. Either way, in about a month the shave reports from other people will start coming in and we shall see how the Gillette and other slantified razors perform for their owners.

Just be happy that Tom and I are ethical people. We could have kept mum about the jig and just churned out "rare" German vintage slants and peddled them on eBay and the various forums. We actually did discuss posting the Gillette slant on this forum as a "can someone help me identify this razor" thread just for ****s and giggles. The reception certainly would have been warmer and less tinged with angst. :)
 
Here's a tip if it bothers you so much:
Out of sight, out of mind.
...but then we would miss out on weighing the pros and cons of modifications to vintage razors. Just because I disagree with the OP of this thread doesn't mean that he does not have a very valid point.

I do feel rather troubled by making the MonoBilt into a slant. While not a rare razor, it is an uncommon razor, and if it hadn't of worked I would have felt terrible. Since it did work, I still feel somewhat conflicted, since it was one of my favorite razors before I slantified it. Tomorrow's shave will determine whether it was a stroke of genius on my part, or a terrible mistake.
 
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