2018 shave #188 (DE:49 SE:68 Str:72 Cart:2)
Sheermonnik Soek
Gillette Techmatic / razor section #10 (1)
RazoRock synth
Witch Hazel & Alum
Nivea post shave balm
Missoni EdP
Since Doug and Chris talked about my razor after I posted a picture of it being taken on Apollo 11, I've been intrigued. I ended up with two razors, but only one cartridge. So, the hunt begins for those. The Techmatic was introduced in 1965 and quickly had a competitor released by Shick called the Auto-Band. The cartridge holds a ribbon of razor in a roll, like a film camera. There is an indicator window to show how many segments of fresh blade you have with "1" indicating the last segment. The larger level is used to advance the ribbon with one full turn taking you to the next segment. The smaller lever adjusts the aggressiveness with 5 different settings. I'll have to look closer, but on qu
ick inspection it seemed to move the white plastic below the blade up and down, thus adjusting the blade gap. In the instructions, it's mentioned there are cartridges that are either 5 blades and adjustable or 10 blades and not adjustable. But you can see this one is 10 and adjustable.
I start with a NOS cartridge right out of the packaging. Which was $1.89 back in the day, or the equivalent to $12-14 in today's dollars. So Gillette was hosing people on cartridge prices even back then. I left the aggressiveness lever set in the middle and went for it. Having read some reviews about how terrible of a shaver this was, I was expecting the worst. But what I got was much too mild. There was just a touch of scratching here and there, but I wasn't removing hair nearly as efficiently as a standard DE blade. No surprise there since the movable ribbon can't be anywhere as stiff as any DE blade. I finished up the first pass with several more strokes that I usually use. Then I turned the adjuster to full aggressiveness. Now fully aggressive on any other razor would be too much for me, but seemed about right for the Techmatic. There was a little more scratching. Maybe on the level you get with the worst new blade roughness from a DE. But the hair removal was more effiecient for sure. Two more passes and I was DFS+ without any clean-up. Would have been easy to get BBS, but I was concerned how sore I might be doing clean-up. In the end there was actually a lot less alum sting than I was expecting.
I wouldn't agree at all with those that have said this is the worst razor ever. Actually, I would much, MUCH prefer this over modern cartridges and funny enough, I might try to take it as my travel razor the next time I only have a carry-on. There are even some DE blades I would prefer this over. But given the flexibility of the blade, I don't think it could ever compete with the outcome of a good DE blade.
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