The "Junior" Gets An Upgrade

huck1680

huck1680

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300
Hi Guys

I was looking at my blade supplies the other day and noticed I had about 100 SE blades and thought "Holy crap, I've got to start using the SEs a bit more". I've been using my Schick C razors but nothing else as far as SEs were concerned. So I looked at my Gem Junior and thought "Time for an upgrade". The original handle was, as we all know, a big ugly chunk of plastic. I had made a new one for myself out of Padauk wood and it was ok, nothing special...just ok.

I'd pretty much finished the converted gym/ workshop area out of the attached garage so I got the lathe all set up and got busy. I decided on the baseball bat shape for the handle because of its ergonomic comfort and spun it from an acrylic pen blank I got from TGN. Went for the orange because I'm a big SF Giants fan and didn't have a blue one for the Yankees.

I'm a lot happier with the new handle, it feels great and I'll be using the Junior more often.

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Very nicely done. And it does look a lot better than the original handle.
May be if it was thought of 80 yrs ago the brand would still be with us.
 
Johnus
That's a valid and clever observation. You might think that given the worldwide obsession with sports related paraphenalia some companies might've gotten a heads up earlier on in their corporate history.
 
Hi Huck,

Very nice job on the handles. The wooden one looks like paduak to me - is it?

Love the acrylic handle though, what's it like to turn? I presume you need to scrape rather than cut it in to shape, or would very light cuts with sharp tooling work for this material?

Good job anyway !

Gordon
 
Hi HUck,

Thanks for you reply - if I'd re-read your original post it actually states you used paduak for the wooden handle :blush:

Anyway, how do you fix the handle to the head? Do you have a stock of original handles that you use for the threaded portion of your replacements, or is the thread a standard one?

Thanks in advance,

Gordon
 
Gordon
I go to a hardware store (Home Depot) with the razor head. I then try various screws until I find the one that threads properly. Next I find the thumbscrews
and make sure the first screw threads into that properly. Once I've got the 2 together I leave enough at the top to afix the razor head to. Then I cut the head of the first screw off, drill a hole into the top of the handle and epoxy the shaft of the screw that's below the thumscrew into the hole in the handle. I hope that's reasonably clear. If not let me know and I'll be happy to post some pics of how I did this.
 
Attached is my first attempt at replacing a handle. The Ever Ready razor I used in this experiment was a poor shaver, possibly becuase the head was at a different angle to the handle when compared to other razors I have of this type.

img0076q.jpg


img0075pb.jpg


Admittedly the finish from tooling could do with cleaning up but, for a first attempt, I like it. It is also a great shaver now, as I used it to give me an excellent "1912" shave yesterday!
 
Thanks Huck,

I didn't notice the resemblance to a marital aid until you pointed it out. The shape was the result of a bit of a "dig in" when trying to turn a sphere on the handle end.
 
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