Poor Man's fix for the Asylum 17-4

He could've saved himself a lot of strife if he had ordered 101 pieces, and tried one himself before shipping them out.

Of course, hindsight is always perfect...yada yada yada.

He actually posted that he'd been using one of the razors from the final approval, which was razor #101, for the past month + and it was fine. Somewhere between there and receiving the 100 razors something changed on the machining end. Having been in that industry its more common than one would think and to someone that doesn't know anything about a razor its just numbers and equations that a machinist is punching into a CNC and its clear to see he obviously punched in a wrong number in the bar area to cut the bevel...

Final approval is basically just first articles and doesn’t have much to do with QC of the actual production run. In effect you get a finalized prototype, but you still always pad production by several percent for QC, testing, and loss.


You could probably take this base plate to a local machine shop that does precision grinding and have them add the bevel. Shouldn’t cost much. Alternatively, make a little sanding jig via 3D printing or out of wood to maintain the angle and then just hand sand it. Shouldn’t be very tough and then you’d have proper blade clamping. And a free razor!

So I hated to waste a beautiful razor so I paired the Top cap and handle with my Timeless.95 Ti dual comb. It stepped up the blade feel and efficiency but was still very smooth. I got a great WTG, XTG shave

So I hated to waste a beautiful razor so I paired the Top cap and handle with my Timeless.95 Ti dual comb. It stepped up the blade feel and efficiency but was still very smooth. I got a great WTG, XTG shave

I will give that a try with my Timeless OC slim base plate.

So I tried out celestino suggestion of using a shim to get the same results as my O-ring experiment. I found that it took two shims to get close to the proper angle. So I figured that if it takes two shims, what if I used two blades and one shim?

I tried that tonight and got some interesting results.
 

The shave itself was slightly inconsistent, probably because the upper blade was at a slightly different angle than the lower blade. WTG was comfortable and efficient. ATG was slightly more aggressive, however also more efficient. I did my usual XTG along the jaw line and under the chin and ended up with a BBS like last night. Given a choice of which I prefer better, I would go with the original O-ring method as I can dial in the aggression (to an extent).

He could've saved himself a lot of strife if he had ordered 101 pieces, and tried one himself before shipping them out.

Of course, hindsight is always perfect...yada yada yada.

He actually posted that he'd been using one of the razors from the final approval, which was razor #101, for the past month + and it was fine. Somewhere between there and receiving the 100 razors something changed on the machining end. Having been in that industry its more common than one would think and to someone that doesn't know anything about a razor its just numbers and equations that a machinist is punching into a CNC and its clear to see he obviously punched in a wrong number in the bar area to cut the bevel...

Final approval is basically just first articles and doesn’t have much to do with QC of the actual production run. In effect you get a finalized prototype, but you still always pad production by several percent for QC, testing, and loss.


You could probably take this base plate to a local machine shop that does precision grinding and have them add the bevel. Shouldn’t cost much. Alternatively, make a little sanding jig via 3D printing or out of wood to maintain the angle and then just hand sand it. Shouldn’t be very tough and then you’d have proper blade clamping. And a free razor!

So my angle grinder is out?
   Seriously though, I can see your jig idea to get ( keep) the proper amount and angle of the work over.

So I tried out celestino suggestion of using a shim to get the same results as my O-ring experiment. I found that it took two shims to get close to the proper angle. So I figured that if it takes two shims, what if I used two blades and one shim?

I tried that tonight and got some interesting results.
 

The shave itself was slightly inconsistent, probably because the upper blade was at a slightly different angle than the lower blade. WTG was comfortable and efficient. ATG was slightly more aggressive, however also more efficient. I did my usual XTG along the jaw line and under the chin and ended up with a BBS like last night. Given a choice of which I prefer better, I would go with the original O-ring method as I can dial in the aggression (to an extent).

Wow! Using two DE blades in a razor. That is brave of you.

I would presume that if you can use thicker shims, then you wouldn't have to use so many DE blades for the shims. I presume this razor would need a minimum of 3 shims to get any cutting done. 
The reason I suggested the shims was that I had imagined it would be the most consistent way to get the desired cutting angle.
Good luck with the experimenting.

So I tried out celestino suggestion of using a shim to get the same results as my O-ring experiment. I found that it took two shims to get close to the proper angle. So I figured that if it takes two shims, what if I used two blades and one shim?

I tried that tonight and got some interesting results.
 

The shave itself was slightly inconsistent, probably because the upper blade was at a slightly different angle than the lower blade. WTG was comfortable and efficient. ATG was slightly more aggressive, however also more efficient. I did my usual XTG along the jaw line and under the chin and ended up with a BBS like last night. Given a choice of which I prefer better, I would go with the original O-ring method as I can dial in the aggression (to an extent).

Wow! Using two DE blades in a razor. That is brave of you.

I would presume that if you can use thicker shims, then you wouldn't have to use so many DE blades for the shims. I presume this razor would need a minimum of 3 shims to get any cutting done. 
The reason I suggested the shims was that I had imagined it would be the most consistent way to get the desired cutting angle.
Good luck with the experimenting.

C'mon, Gillette has five blades. There is still room to go! 

C'mon, Gillette has five blades. There is still room to go! 

Okay, so enough fooling around with shims and O-rings. Today I decided to take the final step and totally ruin the 17-4. I pulled out my Paradigm Ti2 baseplate and started marking the 17-4 baseplate. According to Paradigm, the head of the Ti2 and 17-4 was supposed to be identical and so I figured that would be a good start. I them went to my mini grinder/polisher and set a bevel  and then pulled out my 4 way DMT hone and started with the 200 side and stayed there for a couple of hours. Eventually I moved to the 400 and the 600 sides. When I got it close to what I thought would be right, I did a quick polish on the SB just so it wouldn't scratch my face.





Not having precise tools or anything like that, one side did end up more aggressive than the other, and so I can lie to all of you and say that I really wanted a dual aggression razor. 

Tonight I loaded a blade that I just tossed the day before and took the 17-4 out for a shave. The razor was a little more rough than I was expecting, but it did remove whiskers, which is a definite improvement over the original base plate. I am also not sure how much of the roughness came from an old blade and how much came from the fact that I was dry shaving with this head to test it out a couple of times this afternoon.

Friday, I will try this razor again, this time using a blade that has only a couple of shaves to it. Hopefully it will work.