Adjustable Safety Razors

Here is one of the earliest SE adjustables called a Superman razor these were patented in 1913 and produced 1913 or sometime afterwards

Here is another SE adjustable I used to own,


a British made Wilkinson Pall Mall wedge razor. You can adjust the guard up and down. These razors can take with some careful fiddling a Gem SE blade. These particular Pall Mall razors were produced between 1920 - 1929 and were also sold in North America as a Dunhill through Alfred Dunhill, 5th Avenue, New York City. They were the exclusive North American Wilkinson vendor during that time.

Here is another SE adjustable I used to own,


a British made Wilkinson Pall Mall wedge razor. You can adjust the guard up and down. These razors can take with some careful fiddling a Gem SE blade. These particular Pall Mall razors were produced between 1920 - 1929 and were also sold in North America as a Dunhill through Alfred Dunhill, 5th Avenue, New York City. They were the exclusive North American Wilkinson vendor during that time.

Great shavers too, love mine!

Not my razor or picture but of interest anyways. This is a Schick DE prototype adjustable. I don't believe it ever made it to market but examples do exist in the wild. This most likely was produced sometime between 1965 - 1968.

Another lesser known modern adjustable. Picture from Feather's website. The Feather DER adjustable.

If differential guards count as adjustables then here is the earliest DE differential guard produced. These are my pics but I no longer own this razor pictured.
This is a Clark's DE razor. It was produced between 1909 and 1912. Far as I know this was the first DE produced to compete against the Gillette razors. It used a propertary blade design to get around Gillette's patents that also fit on a GIllette razor while Gillette's three hole blades wouldn't fit on their razors.

I have about ten adjustables, most of them Gillette Fat Boys or Slim Adjustables, a Mergress, the Parker Variant, and the Parker SE adjustable.

I find that I rarely use them. They're all great. But I'm content to vary the angle and the pressure and stick to a nonadjustable.

The idea of adjusting during the shave is appealing but for me I don't find it something I do, and while I was hankering for the Rex for awhile, I got over it.

I have about ten adjustables, most of them Gillette Fat Boys or Slim Adjustables, a Mergress, the Parker Variant, and the Parker SE adjustable.

I find that I rarely use them. They're all great. But I'm content to vary the angle and the pressure and stick to a nonadjustable.

The idea of adjusting during the shave is appealing but for me I don't find it something I do, and while I was hankering for the Rex for awhile, I got over it.

Where a good adjustable shines is not so much in how it shaves but how well it balances out the variations in different blades so that there is a setting for each where regardless of blade you'll get a consistent result. That requires more than simply being able to dial it up or down, the blade geometry is just as important as simple gap adjustments.

Looks like the Gillette single ring old type was also advertised as an adjustable and not just alluded to in the instruction sheets depending the year. I am pretty sure it was the Clark's DE razor with it's differential blade gaps for each side of the guard that first came out in 1909 that pushed them to change how they advertised these razors.

Updated Adjustable Collection Picture Coming Soon.