Vintage WWII Razor Triggers RAD

The old military razor from World War II, which I saw at my friend's private history collection, got me to musing about bakelite razors and alternative shaving products and technologies. Sure enough, one thing led to another -- and that another was me ordering a new razor: the Merkur Bakelite razor, a.k.a. the red and black, the model 030.

 

This hasn't arrived yet, but my primary reason for ordering wasn't its material (likely modern plastic, probably not really Bakelite), but actually the geometry of the razor head. What little meaningful information I could gather from the on-line reviews (typically pretty meaningless, idiotic, or both) seemed to suggest that it has a fairly wide blade-bar span (distance from the blade edge to the safety bar), certainly a healthy blade reveal (the amount of blade that is exposed when looking down on the razor's top cap), and a greater-than-usual curvature of the blade when installed in the razor. The blade exposure (how high the blade edge is in relation to the shave plane, which is formed by the top cap and the safety bar) is uniformly ignored, not mentioned; and ALL photos of the razor are taken WITHOUT a blade installed, which is completely stupid!

Everyone seemed to mention that the razor is light (duh!) and too damned many repeated the phrase that "the weight of the razor does the work", which is inaccurate (sorry, but it is more appropriate to say that the weight of the razor influences some persons as to how firmly they press the razor against the face -- that is, unless you shave while lying down; in that case the weight of the razor may directly influence the shave).

I ordered the razor to see the curvature of the blade that it creates and the effect on the shave. The idea being that the smaller the angle of blade to face while shaving, the less scraping and, presumably, the less irritating the shave. We'll see.

This also prompted me to pull out some razors that I don't normally use anymore such as my Rimei RM2003, which I still believe is the best value in DE shaving. With it this morning I got a very close shave though with a few minor weepers despite my focus on using very light pressure (must be the weight of the razor doing some of the work against my will -- ah hahahahahahahahahaha.)

Rimei RM2003 with blade installed.

Happy shaving!