Muhle/Jagger razor head - oh dear - disaster strikes.

Nice to read that you got a replacement.
Mühle also have a very good after sale support, I had a (very) little plating issue with my R89 head, I contacted directly Mühle in Germany, they simply sent me a replacement head, they didn't ask to send them back the faulty part... And what is also nice, when you have any question, it's Mr Mueller (the owner) who respond to the requests directly...That's what I call customer service.
 
Tim B said:
That sounds ominous. I got a Chatsworth only two weeks ago. How long had you had yours before this happened?
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Hi Tim

I was able to check my shaving blog. I bought the razor on 6 January 2010. So it snapped after just over 3 months. I've used the replacement regularly since. Just a one off I hope.
 
The use of zinc alloys in cast parts is something which concerns me with modern razors. Zinc alloys are just not as strong or as durable as brasses and bronzes - both from a tensile strength standpoint (witness Fido's razor head), and also in terms of corrosion resistance.

Zinc alloys are generally a lot less strong than brass alloys (so it simply takes less force to bend/break them), and also less ductile (so they just break without warning). Also look how many brassed Gillette Olds, News, and Techs there are out there still giving perfectly good shaves - because when the plating wears off, the brass oxidises relatively gracefully and slowly to give a relatively inert working surface. Contrast that with zinc alloys, where once the plating goes, it really starts to pit and get pretty grungy very quickly.

The upside for the manufacturers is the cost and ease of finishing and fabrication. Zinc alloys are relatively easy to cast into very precise and intricate forms and take minimal machining and finishing to produce an item ready for the plating baths. Brass is a lot less easy to cast in the same way (much higher melting point for starters) and it generally takes a lot more effort and machining to get to the final finished item ready for plating. That said, I'm always impressed at the quality and fineness of the cast brass/bronze top plates on vintage Gillettes, and I can't help feeling that they may have been the most expensive part of the razor to produce.

It would be nice if some of the makers produced the modern design of razors, but with the more durable materials such as brass. I guess that's why I find my iKon Bulldog and Feather AS-D1 so appealing... :shave
 
I'm wondering if rinsing the razor in hot water can cause fracture. The thread expands into the handle causing it to stick, so loosening or tightening after a hot rinse causes it to break.
 
Plus the thermal shock (and therefore the expansion involved) is low - even if it's 10C in your bathroom and the water is 60C that's going to be a thermal expansion orders of magnitude lower than the tolerance on the machining of the thread.

For reference the quoted expansivity of Zamak is around 30 μm/m/K - 30 parts per million per degree.

edit (10 hours after the event) and of course the handle is going to be expanding and contracting similarly...
 
I recently bought a mint condition Gillette 1904 model. It looks like it was sold for the 1st time yesterday. The vendor provided a second head, nice but not mint, that he recommended that I use if I were to use it for daily shaving. He also repeatedly stressed that I not over tighten it.
I had not heard this concern with Gillette before. I did notice the heads on the older Gillette's dimpling, over tightening must have been the cause.
 
Johnus said:
I recently bought a mint condition Gillette 1904 model. It looks like it was sold for the 1st time yesterday. The vendor provided a second head, nice but not mint, that he recommended that I use if I were to use it for daily shaving. He also repeatedly stressed that I not over tighten it.
I had not heard this concern with Gillette before. I did notice the heads on the older Gillette's dimpling, over tightening must have been the cause.
Click to expand...

The concern with you over tightening it is that you may crack the barrel. It's a very common problem on those old Gillette models.
 
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