Vintage brass 1930's Gillette Tech Safety Razor - Review

Following up from my previous post, I restored a brass 1930's Gillette Tech Safety Razor. It was a long process, but I achieved amazing results, removing decades worth of tarnish and corrosion to reveal the safety razor's original beauty.
Now,  it's time for the most exciting part of the whole process; the all important first shave! But before that,  there are a few interesting parts to note.

Blade Exposure 

The one thing that I was most curious about was the blade gap and exposure I would receive from the safety razor head. Would the long comb on the bottom cap of the head affect blade gap significantly?

The answer? Yes, but only very minutely. When looking at the images above, particularly the bottom right image, the blade gap from the bottom cap is medium. What makes it interesting is that the long comb of the bottom cap is right near the top bend of the comb. This means that when the razor is on a 45 degree angle mid shave, the blade would slice through the hairs nicely, in effect using the long comb effect to "comb" right through big clumps of shave lather, thus leaving a bit of residual slickness behind for additional passes.

Blade exposure from the top cap is at least 3.5-4mm, and allows the blade to become more efficient during the shave. Thinking of blade exposure, it is similar to that of the RazoRock Hawk SE.

Weight Distribution and Control

Now this is intriguing to me, seeing as I really do like to use safety razors with majority of the heft coming from the Razor head. With this Safety Razor, the weight is mostly leaning towards the handle. I would say there is a 40(%):60(%) razor head to handle weight ratio respectively.

What does this mean for the overall usage experience? Not a thing, seeing as the way the handle is designed, it is slim, and the knurling offers a lot of grip with the ball end preventing slippage. I actually like that this safety razor offers this type of weight ratio, because as the head is actually quite sleek, it offers the user more control to apply measured doses of added pressure to those hard to shave areas of the face.

I basically find it near impossible to cut myself with this razor, and I know that this is a big call. But the way that this head is designed with the long comb, it adds an extra guard for slippage, letting the comb take the grunt instead of the blade to face.

Final Verdict

This safety razor is unique, elegant and simple. They sure did know how to make them back in the day, and also know how to make them last! This thing is nearly 90 years old, and when refurbished with some elbow grease, it is as good as new.

I loved the control of this razor. The handle having the most weight apart from the head is genius with the type of head design this razor has. It is sleek, and allowed me to have a nice smooth, yet medium-aggressive shave that left me BBS in 2 passes. It is the fourth vintage safety razor in my collection, and dare I say, is now in my top 2 vintage razors. It just provided a smooth, calming and relaxing shave with Zero irritation.

Whether or not it can make number 1 will depend on a number of uses. Pairing it with a Wilkinson Sword DE blade was great, as this also offered other variables of smoothness at the same time. I will pair this Razor with a few other different blades before I can definitely where it falls in placing! Again, testing these things out is on a per-user basis, but I can say that after using some of the most popular vintage razors out there, this one was surreal!