slant blade alignement

Roefisher said:
I've two slants, both the larger Barberpoles, and they have blade movement until tightened down. One has slightly more play than the other when the blade is sitting loose on the head lugs.

Like a couple of folk have already mentioned, I match the blade to the cover. My own routine is to put a blade on the lugs, screw down a little then, looking straight down on it, I check both sides for squareness and exposure, to the head above it, before setting it right and tightening up. I mention exposure as it is possible on one of mine to have the blade square, yet with a lot more exposure on one side.

As far as loading a blade and tightening it down without looking and being alright, that person has either been very lucky or is an Internet hero full of idle, dangerous chat. All I can say from my own experience and research is to seriously avoid against doing that. I can see for myself how wrong it can be with a misaligned sharp blade and have read, from some well respected people, where they admitted getting awful shaves because of this mistake - mainly though just not knowing any better at the time.

Finishing on a happier note, loaded properly they're a fantastic shaver - well recommended.

Mark
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It's a huge relief for me to read your post, Mark, as your experience almost exactly mirrors mine. I don't doubt that some Slants automatically load the blade correctly, or that some users have sufficiently tough facial skin to withstand a misaligned blade, but I'm not one of them!:icon_rolleyes::angel:
 
Well I suppose I must be sort of half falling into that "Internet hero full of idle dangerous chat" mentioned by Roefisher as I have been known to load up without checking alignment before, as I said earlier. I'm still here though, I can assure you, and I'm not particularly tough or leathery of skin.

If Merkur were selling a razor where manual blade alignment was absolutely imperative for safety, I think we'd either see a bigger instruction booklet telling you how to load up safely, or a lot of court cases for slashed faces. Of course the latter doesn't happen so I can only surmise that the former is not considered necessary by Herr Merkur, and they think it's not dangerous to be a bit willy nilly with your loading.

All naysaying aside I will stress that even though I'm considered cavalier by some, I am a confirmed blade alignment checker when I remember. That's because I do acknowledge that there is a little bit of play there and so I line up the blade with the cap because mentally I'm more comfortable with doing that. I don't think that play is lethal or dangerous.
I guess all I'm saying is that when I've forgotten I've not come to blows or had a particularly bad shave that I can recall.
 
I'm not sure Chris, I've never cut myself with my slant bars except for the first day where my angle was way, way too flat whilst doing the 'tache and I dug into the septum a tiny bit. It's been fine since then, I don't consider it that punishing a razor to be honest. It's not punishing like an R41 can potentially be.

I think Roefisher is specifically saying it's dangerous to use a misaligned blade? Forgive me if I've misread it. I just think if it was actually that dangerous it probably wouldn't or shouldn't be on sale... even an R41 can line it's own blade up. You kind of take that aspect as a given.
 
used my slant tonight and got a great shave. didnt expect my post to generate this amount of discussion, but hey ho :) i did have a fiddle about to get the blade how i wanted, but it wasnt a big issue and im impressed by how smooth a shave i got from it. i think once i get a few shaves under my belt with it i think a few of myother razors will be taking a back seat. thank you for the replies :)
 
I use a vintage horrfitz. Its most definitely the "chuck it in and go" variety.

It yours needs manual adjustment then it could be that something is wrong.

A safety razor by definition is idiot proof and shouldn't need any pissing about with, be it a slant or standard.
 
I just took a pic with me setting the blade up both ways.

D1blWN62


hMxbxLcN


I use the razor as it is in pic 1, its a smooth cut free shave.

As set in pic 2 aligned with the cap, wouldn't every stroke be uneven due to the blade gap?
 
i think this question has caused me more confusion than from before i asked it. ive got to the point of total overthink, im just going to approach it as i would my merkur hd where i put the blade in have a little tweak so it looks right to me and away i go. if id have bought this razor and not been using this forum, my approach wouldve been... 'does that look right? yeah? ok, lets go', so thats going to be my approach.
 
All this talk of slant bar razors I've pulled the trigger on one, a 37C I have to confes that this post has been helpfull, so long as the blade looks like pic 1 in gravy's comparison photos can't get better than that.

Dont think the 39C would be a good idear for me,looks a bit heavy to start off with:icon_eek:
 
I don't think my point has been understood - when I refer to going by blade exposure, I DO NOT, repeat DO NOT mean looking straight down on the head.

What I mean is that, if you hold the razor in front of you with the handle vertical and the long axis of the head running from left to right so that you can see one of the cutting edges of the blade, then slowly tilt the base of the handle away from you, as you tilt the razor, you'll get to a point where the far side of the blade and the guard bar on that far side come into view across the top of the head of the razor. Think of it like cresting a hill in a car and suddenly the view on the far side appears. If you get the angle at which the razor is tilted correct, you'll see the head, the blade edge and the tip of the guard bar all in the same view. At that point, if you can see the same amount of blade all the way across, it's set right.

I know there's a lot of kick-back from several of you, and I agree that it shouldn't need finessing - it should be like any other DE razor, but I know that it isn't. In order to get the same efficiency of shave from the Slant I bought as I had from the pass-around Slant, I have to align the blade so that, viewing it top-down, it is aligned differently. As for the idea that, no matter how it loads, it can't cut you; if I allow the blade in my Slant to set itself, about half the time it drops in a such a ridiculous angle that, on one side, the blade disappears behind the head, and, on the other side, it nearly overhangs the bar! If I'm supposed to be able to use it like that, then I should be able to hold a DE blade between my fingers and shave myself without a razor!
 
Gravy said:
I just took a pic with me setting the blade up both ways.

D1blWN62


hMxbxLcN


I use the razor as it is in pic 1, its a smooth cut free shave.

As set in pic 2 aligned with the cap, wouldn't every stroke be uneven due to the blade gap?
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As I've tried to explain, it seems to be that no two Slants are the same. It may well be that yours shaves beautifully when set-up with that alignment - try viewing it as I described in my last post, and I suspect you'll find that the blade appears even. I found that I had to set the pass-around example like that for it to shave well - if I aligned with the cap it was very mild - but the point is that the one I bought for myself needs to be set-up as in picture 2 - if not, the blade is massively exposed at one end and completely shielded at the other!

I can see from your photos that your example has quite a pronounced difference between the angle of the cap edge and the bar - hence why you prefer the blade at more of a slant. Mine has a much smaller difference between the cap and bar angle, so it needs to be aligned differently. That's why all this bravado doesn't mean anything - Vinny and Canuck get/got away with as their examples are/were those where the blade dropped into the friendly position. Mine doesn't, and I suspect from his post that Mark's doesn't either.
 
Any chance that this is related to that hoary old fave ........... Merkur's quality control over the last couple of years ?
The 37c & 39c slants I had in the past & the Hoffritz slant I presently have don't (& didn't) require any special loading procedures. Just pop in your blade of choice, tighten up and away you go. Can't help feeling that if you're having to faff about ensuring blade exposures are constant & equal there's something going awry in the manufacturing tolerances. Which is a gr8 pity as I do really like slants & for me they've always functioned very well.

JohnnyO. \:icon_razz:
 
JohnnyO said:
Any chance that this is related to that hoary old fave ........... Merkur's quality control over the last couple of years ?
The 37c & 39c slants I had in the past & the Hoffritz slant I presently have don't (& didn't) require any special loading procedures. Just pop in your blade of choice, tighten up and away you go. Can't help feeling that if you're having to faff about ensuring blade exposures are constant & equal there's something going awry in the manufacturing tolerances. Which is a gr8 pity as I do really like slants & for me they've always functioned very well.

JohnnyO. \:icon_razz:
Click to expand...

For my part, I think that's probably the reason. Now, I'm no engineer, but I doubt that it's impossible to produce a razor to a tolerance which would prevent the difference in loading shown in Gravy's photos.
 
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