The razor today uses the King C. Gillette head from Thursday’s shave but with a new RazoRock UFO handle. In the post at the link I had some harsh words about the usability of the origiinal KCG handle, and Craig pointed out that the handle worked well for him. (The comment discussion from that post led to this post — well, that discussion and the arrival of the two handles I had ordered from Italian Barber: the Barber Pole and the UFO. (There’s also a haloed UFO handle.)
As you can see from the photo (click to enlarge), the UFO is chequered and also offers a knob that provides a secure grip in the against-the-grain pass (when the razor is held inverted). I chose the UFO for the King C. Gillette because it is strongly reminiscent of the handle design for the Gillette ball-end Tech of yesteryear. However, it is not simply a copy: the chequering is much deeper and more defined, and it is stainless steel.
“Copy” brings up a misstatement I made in that earlier post, in which I wrote that Gillette was using the Edwin Jagger/Mühle head. That is not true. Gillette is using the Edwin Jagger/Mühle head design, but the actual head is a Chinese knockoff of the EJ/Mühle head: design an exact copy (so far as I can see) but made in the People’s Republic of China. It is a testimonial to the excellence of the EJ/Mühle design that it is so frequently copied. Of course, some new razors makers do an original design, but for companies not up to that, copying a good design from a current competitor is a way to save time and money. (I see a big difference between bringing back an excellent design from a razor that is no longer made vs. just copying a current design created by a competitor. For example, as I noted, the UFO handle brings back (but also update and improves) the design of the ball-end Tech handle.)
The Barber Pole, like the King C. Gillette handle, uses a spiral design, but if you look at it, you see the cross-engravings between the spirals, which preclude the kind of twisting slippage I experienced with the KCG handle, whose spirals were deeply engraved with no cross-hatchings. Those smooth spirals made the razor twist in my hand. Gillette itself, in its rhodium-plated English models of the Aristocrat, used the same sort of spiral design you see on the RazoRock Barber Pole handle above.
Finally, a note on usability. One commenter noted that he has no problems with the KCG handle — good news, to be sure, but that doesn’t really offset the difficulties that I had in using the handle. Good usability requires more than making sure the product works for some users. (Programmers who do their own program design are often baffled that users have difficulty with the interface. The programmers know that the interface works fine for them, so something must be wrong with the users, thus the “RTFM” acronym. Programmers much prefer to view the problem as being the user and not the programmers’ design.)
The discussion did suggest a possible reason for our disparate experiences. The tap water here is very soft, and thus a little soap means a lot of slickness. If the tap water is at all hard, soap will add some friction because the sticky scum that forms when soap interacts with the calcium in hard water.
People accustomed to hard water feel that their skin is “squeaky clean” after a shower — and when they shower in soft water, they feel as though they cannot rinse off the soap. The “squeaky clean” friction is from a fine layer of soap scum that adheres to their skin. They don’t realize that wet skin (absent soap scum) is slick. They believe they can’t rinse off the soap when the water’s soft because they don’t feel the soap scum that sticks to their skin from their hard-water showers.
So if the tap water is slightly hard, the KCG handle will have a thin, unseen layer of soap scum that will provide friction, and the user will not experience the problems of slickness that I found in using the razor. For such a user, the handle will work better (though it still lacks a grip-assist for the ATG pass).
I continued to observe the process of loading the brush with soap. A reader suggested some time back that l’Occitane Cade soap works much better with synthetic bristles, and thus today I used my Maggard Razors 22mm synthetic. I wet the knot well, shook the brush several times to remove as much water as possible, and started loading.
To my surprise, the brush immediately began picking up soap. I had seen this before, in using ultra-premium shaving soaps, but I certainly would not put the Cade soap in that class. But there it was: soap on the brush. I added just a small amount of water — by passing the tip of the brush quickly through a dribble of hot water from the tap — and that was enough to finish the loading. That was a surprise.
I coated my face well with the proto-lather, added a little water to the brush, and brushed up a very nice lather. I think I know how how to get the best from Cade shaving soap.
Three passes with the King C. Gillette razor — made much easier by the new handle — left my face perfectly smooth. The EJ/Mühle head design really is excellent, and the knockoff is an exact match. Good work, Gillette!
A splash of Cade EDT, made into more of an aftershave with a couple of squirts of Grooming Dept Hydrating Gel, and the weekend is launched.