How to Straighten a Gillette Fatboy Spider Bar Assembly

I own a 1954 Gillette Fatboy DE razor, and it is one of my most prize possessions. The overall aesthetic of the razor, weight ratio, the finish, the adjustment and TTO mechanism intrigue me, and every time I use it, I get an extremely smooth, BBS and irritation free shave.

Although with these razors are very much sought after, and are quite old or "antique", they do, like anything else in life, suffer from wear and tear. One of the main areas of wear that occurs on these razors are the TTO blade enclosure doors at the top of the razor head.

This is a direct result of an uneven "spider bar assembly " atop the Angel Bar mechanism, which forces the TTO blade enclosure doors to open and close unevenly on the Angel bar Mechanism (below).

The Spider bar Assembly holds both enclosure doors (or if you think about it, "wings") together. You can see that the Spider bar in the picture above is actually what I like to call "cock-eyed" and drooping down on one side.

As a result, the TTO (Twist To Open) blade enclosure doors offer up an uneven blade gap exposure from any adjustment dial setting. The razor blade then rattles in the blade enclosure, and can cut your face whilst shaving with the uneven blade gap.

To fix this, I found a disassembly and repair tutorial on YouTube by the Razor Emporium. All I needed in terms of tools was:

• 1 x Pair of Pointy Nose Pliers (wrapped the plier prongs in duct tape)
• 1 x make-shift tool to remove the TTO screw at the base of the handle. I made this out of a thick paper clip with which I bent into shape. Click here for inspiration.

In the LHS image above, you can see the TTO screw, the Angel bar mechanism, the TTO Spring, the DE Razor Handle and the make-shift tool I used to disassemble the TTO Screw which holds the Angel bar mechanism inside the handle.

I would then use the pliers to bend only slightly. the Spider bar assembly to ensure that it looks straight on both ends of the Blade enclosure, and hence, until I see both doors close nice and evenly.

To reassemble the razor, I traced back the steps I took to ultimately, put the razor back together. Be warned, the TTO Spring and screw can be a challenge to assemble back together. A little pressure is needed.

The result... I now have fully evenly closing TTO Blade enclosure doors at the head of the razor on every adjustment dial setting, and it only took the best part of 20 minutes. Now for the shave!