Thread: best beginner DE

Well I just recieved my Ebay purchase today in the mail and haven't even cleaned them up yet,but I got a gold gillette 3 piece, a gillette fat boy,and a gem SE,all 4 14 bucks.Just can't wait to try them out .

Very nice! The fatboy itself is worth about double that in decent condition and cleaned up.

The Merkur HD 34c is a great little razor.

Good luck with your Gillette.

Originally Posted by PhatMan

CoolMaltBeverage,

If you would like a 'new' razor, the Merkur '1904' (Model 42 closed comb, Model 41 open comb) is very similar to the Gillette Tech 3-peice, and is relatively in-expensive. I use one when I am away on business.

Best regards

Russ

Can someone explain the point of the comb to me? I'm looking at getting a Jagger 89 DE soon, but have no idea how to use it, or the purpose of the comb and the whole open vs closed comb thing.

Here is an open comb razor. These are generally known to be quite aggressive and probably not the tool off choice for a beginner. A "closed comb" is just that. also known as the bar.



Cheers, Fozz

Sorry, should have been clearer - I know the difference between open and closed comb, I just don't get the point of either of them. Maybe I'm not getting this DE thing yet. I'll have to do more research on the net as to how to use it properly.

Originally Posted by mosley59

Sorry, should have been clearer - I know the difference between open and closed comb, I just don't get the point of either of them. Maybe I'm not getting this DE thing yet. I'll have to do more research on the net as to how to use it properly.

Open comb was the original safety razor design, even before there were Gillette-style DEs. The idea is that the teeth, in combination with the razor's cap, protected the skin from being cut by the blade. The blade still "stuck out" past a tangent between the cap and the guard teeth but that exposure was limited for safety. Whiskers longer than the exposed distance could reach the blade by passing between the teeth.

That was the standard design for decades. I wasn't there years ago when open combs were generally replaced by safety bars but have heard some plausible explanations:

1. When an open comb DE was dropped, the outer teeth would bend. One improvement they made was to beef up the outer teeth and you will see some razors with fatter teeth at the corners but this didn't eliminate the problem completely. Safety bars don't have teeth to bend.
2. Open comb DE razors were generally made from cast metal. This worked well but was expensive. Safety bars can be made with stamped sheet metal and are therefore cheaper to manufacture.
3. Although the above two issues made safety bars desirable there was a problem -- men tended to go for extended periods without shaving and safety bars just flattened out the long whiskers making the shave less effective. Once men started shaving more often this became less of a problem so the above considerations started to win out.

Note that GEM had an apparently unique solution with its head design which used both teeth and a bar. The teeth were the safety feature (as above) and the bar was there to keep the teeth in line. The design lifted the bar up off of the face making it less of an interference when shaving longer whiskers. The design also allowed for a stamped sheet metal manufacturing process. Perhaps this was one of the 1900/1901 patents.

Another advantage of open comb (and the GEM equivalent) is that the lather is not scraped off the beard just a millimeter or so before the blade gets to it. Apparently this was not enough of a consideration to prevent Gillette from going to safety bars.

About aggressiveness: The term is not well defined, but however you define it, the difference between teeth and a safety bar has no effect on it. Both the toothed design and the safety bar design provide the same type of protection -- keeping the blade from digging into the skin. Both techniques are equally effective at providing safety because they work in an identical fashion -- allowing limited blade exposure.

There are examples of both very aggressive and very mild razors in both open comb and safety bar configurations.

So when you say safety bar you are referring to closed combs? Thanks heaps for that explanation, it's cleared things up a lot for me.

Originally Posted by mosley59

So when you say safety bar you are referring to closed combs? Thanks heaps for that explanation, it's cleared things up a lot for me.

I guess the early GEMs could be described as "closed comb", but the term doesn't have much meaning in the DE world. Either there is a comb or there is not.

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I thought it might be better than starting a new one to ask the same basic question.

I wondered if anyone could weigh in on the Merkur 1904/1906 Bar vs. Merkur 1904/1906 Open vs. Merkur 34C.

I've never shaved with a DE razor. These are razors that I've seen recommended on this thread, but I just want to know if someone could give me a good comparison.

Thanks,
John