Reconciling with the Gillette Slim

A couple of weeks ago after a really bad shave with my adjustable Gillette Slim razor, I swore I was done with it. But it was like a really bad argument with one's wife; after I cooled down and reconsidered, maybe it wasn't time to divorce just yet.

I don't think my Slim will ever be my favorite shaving implement, but it does have its moments. On my skin, the Slim seems to be more blade sensitive than some of my other razors. I haven't sorted out exactly all the blades that are better or worse, but I do know that a new Personna Super (the so-called Lab Blue) blade is NOT the blade for me in this razor. I had a disastrous shave with a second-use lab blue and the razor set to a mild 3.

Yet I had a great shave with the Slim and a used Personna red label blade, the platinum-chrome blade, with the razor set to a more moderate 5.

The Slim, like any of my long-term relationships, obviously has its ups and downs.

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If you are a regular visitor at the Sharpologist.com blog, you may have noticed that I had an article published there once again about a week ago. That one was on the subject of shaving as performance art. (To easily find any of my articles, simply search the site using my last name, Hansford, as the key word.)

I also have another article on deck to be published in the near future on the challenges and curse of modern cartridge-style, multi-bladed razor designs. You might keep an eye out for it.

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Two of my regular razors remain the Merkur open-comb 15C and the Rimei RM2003 (a.k.a. on Amazon as the "Traditional Double Edge Razor"), both of which are three-piece razor designs. In terms of shaving character, I think of them as bookends around the later (after WWII) Gillette Tech razors. The 15C is slightly more mild in shave character than the Tech, and the RM2003 slightly more aggressive though skin friendly. Depending on the blade, the condition of my skin, and the closeness of shave that I seek, these three razors are the ones that I tend to use most frequently.

         

 Happy shaving!

Unrequited Love for the Gillette Slim

UPDATE: Since the publication of this article, I have reconciled with my Slim. You can read that article here.  

Now I know how the girlfriend of a psychopath feels. I keep trying to love the Gillette Slim Adjustable razor, but it just won't love me back. I keep thinking it's me; but it's not.

My 1963 Slim Adjustable

Two days ago, with the Slim set to four (of nine, where nine is maximally aggressive and one is maximally mild) and a tenth-shave SuperMax Titanium blade, I got a good shave. Encourged by this, I went to the well again the next day.

Common denominator between
Vincent Price and my Slim?
Blood?

Yesterday I set the Slim to three using the same blade -- this time its eleventh shave -- and, strangely, the shave was more irritating with too many annoying weepers.

So thinking it was the blade, I put in a new Dorco ST-301, set the Slim to two, and went at it again this morning.

Like in a bad Vincent Price knock-off movie (are there any good ones?) -- horrors! -- weepers and irritation galore! This shave today was so irritating, that two-thirds through, I took the blade out of the Slim and put it into my Merkur 15C open-comb razor and finished the shave.

No wonder my dad switched from the Slim to the Gillette's Trac II. The Gillette Slim Adjustable just doesn't consistently work for me, and I'm guessing was far from optimal for him as well.

I can get an okay standard shave (one pass with the grain), but when I go for a good shave.... forget about it.

Well, some matches just aren't made in heaven. And keeping with the Vincent Price theme, some are made in hell. So the Slim has gone back into cold storage like on a slab at the morgue. I'm done. It's dead to me.

The Merkur 15C open-comb classic has become my go-to razor,
when I'm looking for a trouble-free shave with a new blade.

Happy shaving!