Play on razor head / blade slightly changes blade angle

I've noticed my Merkur HD has a slight bit of play while tightening down the head, and while twisting the base and tightening the head, this causes the head to sometimes twist slightly in the direction its being tightened. This means that from a top down view, the blade is not parallel to the edge of the razor, but slightly twisted so that one edge of the blade is closer to the razor edge than the other.

If you look at the image (and I apologize for the poor quality - my camera battery is dead and I used my phone), you will notice that you can see slightly lesser of the bottom teeth than the top (I've exaggerated it with the red marks to compensate for poor photo quality )

Does this make any difference at all? I'm guessing that since the edge of the razor is always traveling parallel to the skin, this will cause one edge to press deeper into the skin than the other. In any case I'm now holding the edges of the blade while tightening so that it stays parallel, but was just wondering if I'm just being too paranoid! This also happens sometimes when the head still remains parallel to the edge, but play in the blade causes the blade to rotate slightly.

Perhaps it is just me but I am having a hard time judging if there is any difference in the blade coverage between the two arrows. The reflection makes it pretty hard to judge. From what I can see it appears to be the same on both ends.

as youre tightening it down, can you adjust the blade placement by hand to get it parallel?

I can see the difference even in the camera-phone photo, and I would say it is NOT good to have the difference there. You need to figure out some way to make sure that the blade is in there PERFECTLY straight.

I don't have any experience with that razor, so I don't have an answer to your dilemma, except to say that it must be solved.

@fleshdunce, perhaps the camera-phone photo is a bit blurred so its not very noticeable but it is up close - difference would probably be not more than 0.5mm.

@mdunn, yes its an easy fix, I just hold the two edges of the blade that stick out at the top and bottom while tightening.

@kingfisher, yes I thought as much, and as mentioned above its an easy fix - just had not noticed it before!