Wondering about supporting Pereira Shavery’s crowdfunder and get one of the unbreakable shaving bowls they are offering? What if I told you that you have the opportunity to get it with free shipping?
That’s right; there is a limited number of perks available that means you can get the bowl without having to pay shipping. They will go fast, I’m sure, so don’t ponder too long 🙂
For various reasons – mostly to do with an idea for tomorrow – I’m not shaving today.. but I can take the time to tell you all that if you want in on the Pereira Shavery unbreakable lather bowl crowdfunder and get the bowl with 50% off shipping, you need to act soon – not only are the offer limited in number, but it only last a couple of days more.
I’m considering chipping in myself, even if I’m lucky enough to have one of these as an early sample… I wouldn’t mind a second one in a different colour, as well as more of Pereira’s soap.
My desktop isn’t my friend today… so have a video instead:
I’ve mentioned this a few years back, but it bears repeating:
Over at Project Gutenberg – which is an awesome site for free books, by the way – I found a gem from 1905:
Next to the razor, the most important article of the shaving outfit is the soap. In its proper use lies the real secret of easy shaving.
If you desire a really clean shave, you must go over the face the second time.
It’s a highly enjoyable read, and I urge you to take a few minutes to grab a copy.
…so I could understand what he said about one of my favourite soaps.
Recently I found – and I’ve forgotten how I ended up there – a piece on restoring an old straight. Not just any old straight either; a straight lost at the Somme front during the Great War.
It is well worth a read by the way.
The restorer have some good points about the relative longevity of plastic razor cartridges versus old fashioned straights (and by extension safety razors); to paraphrase a cart lasts for a few shaves and lingers in nature forever, while an old fashion razor will shave forever yet will rust and decompose if lost or thrown away…
…and even a rusty, dinged up, buried for a century razor can still sometimes shave again!
The Gillette Toggle is one of the more mechanically interesting razors out there… by moving a lever – the “toggle” that gives the razor it’s name – one way or the other the razor head will either open fully to let a user replace a blade, or just a smidgen to let a user rinse the blade.
The mechanism behind the Toggle was patented in 1957, and the patent itself makes for pretty interesting reading. Several springs have to be tuned to work in harmony, and making it adjustable increases the complexity further. I mean, just have a look:
Now compare that to a traditional three piece or even twist-to-open razor… and you understand why the Toggle wasn’t a cheap razor when it was introduced. Now, the Toggle as manufactured wasn’t identical to the patent – changes was likely made to improve ease of manufacture – but it was still a complicated razor as the following drawings show:
If the drawings are a little hard to read, well, I found an image of a disassembled Toggle:
A large spring that – I guess – controls the adjusting razor head, and a smaller one that seems to control the toggle. Or it might be the other way around – this is a razor that makes my head spin a bit. It’s also worth noting all the bushings and washers that allow bits to rotate and slide in relation to each other… this is a razor that will not take kindly to gunk in the mechanism.
As far as I know – or knew, rather – the complexity of the Toggle meant that no one tried to copy it or make a direct competitor. So imagine my surprise and mechanical interest when I stumbled over a thread on my favorite shave forum that pointed me towards Janus Razors; a small scale operation bent on recreating the Toggle.
As far as I can tell it’s not a straight copy, but rather a reimagining of the Toggle adapted for modern materials and manufacture technologies… I’m probably not far of the mark when I’m guessing CNC-machining and investment castings, both technologies that were close to science fiction when the original Toggle was designed.
I’ve found a few images of what I believe is prototypes or preproduction samples:
While I don’t think I’ll get a Janus Toggle myself – limited budget, already have a fairly nice collection of razors in my rotation, and so on – but I’m tickled by the fact that someone is diving into the deep end of mechanically complicated razors and are trying to recreate the Gillette Toggle.
It is something very satisfying to whip up your own lather before shaving… to see a tiny bit of shaving cream and a few drops of water turn into a nice, thick, rich and nice smelling lather. The slightly cool feel as the eucalyptus and menthol lather first touches, and then covers, most of the face – and then taking it off with long, controlled strokes with my old fashioned safety razor. A quick splash of water, and then the sting of the alum as it finds the small nicks and scratches that I couldn’t see in the mirror.
It don’t matter if the lather cup I use is a bright pink snack bow from Ikea. It don’t matter if my brush is a reasonably cheap one from Body Shop. It don’t even matter that my bathroom is a ‘three toilets, three showers’ shared ablution container that – frankly – is a bit run down. What matters is that it’s five minutes of ManTime, and a link to my more or less daily routine at home. Try that with a spray can full of foam and plastic razors with five blades…
