No guard DE?

mjclark said:

I just use a hacksaw to seperate the guard from the corners, then bend the guard firmly up and down with the pliers until it snaps off.

An Old Type would be ideal, though maybe not quite as good looking
What do you think of the Souplex OC? I found it very mild but it does allow steep angle.

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I found the Souplex to be a fairly decent mild-medium shaver. I can't remember if I used steep angle (although I do so intuitively and adjust only if it doesn't work). Smooth, more effective than a Tech, but not a standout performer. It is, however, a very attractive razor, that cost me almost $40, so I think I will modify an Old Type (that I can pick up for $5).

So these two Rimei razors arrived from Singapore. They'll be my first Devettes. I just need to snap the guard bars with pliers then file down the rough edges, right?

Again using the NEW LC's corner teeth as reference, although the Rimei is less wide, you can create effective corner guards by cutting inward before the outer lather-channel, uh, bastions? with a hacksaw, then snapping only the center portion of the bar off with pliers. Also, I still advocate half-siders for easy reduction and pick-ups.

p38thadl said:

Again using the NEW LC's corner teeth as reference, although the Rimei is less wide, you can create effective corner guards by cutting inward before the outer lather-channel, uh, bastions? with a hacksaw, then snapping only the center portion of the bar off with pliers.

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+1
Definitely keep the corner guards in place - they perfect this thing!

This is what you're aiming for:

...and I shaved with my 2013 R41 last night and it felt just like a devette.

I'm wondering how the R41 and the devette compare directly - does the guard on the R41 come into play at all, or is it a devette in disguise?

I've posted a thread to check out the R41/devette comparison here: http://www.badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php?p=7342030

mjclark said:

+1
Definitely keep the corner guards in place - they perfect this thing!

This is what you're aiming for:

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Wish I'd read this before I attacked the razor with the pliers. Took off the whole safety bars/guards.

The resulting shave was very harsh! For me it was nothing like my R41, which was a pussycat from the start. I'm not even sure I'll expose myself to the devette again, but good luck to those of you travelling this route and getting great shaves.

So. You all made me do it, with all your talk and your pictures and your cool names for stuff. For shame!

Out came the dremel. Cut up a cheapo Chinese baseplate. Matched it up with a Parker 26c handle and a RRBS top cap. Stuffed a Rapira Platinum Lux blade in it, was solid as a rock and looked pretty darn good. Told myself to wait until the weekend to try it as I have no shavette or straight experience, and I'm still quite new at DE shaving. Could get messy.

Made it 23 hours to Thursday night. Pretty good if I do say so myself.

First pass was rough. Why? I was scared of all that unguarded shiny sharp steel, and had no idea what the proper angle was. I was barely touching the razor to my face, so light that the blade was skipping as it skimmed over the hairs. Went better when I calmed down and tried to shave as I do with a regular DE, with careful adjustments to the angle and keeping things slow. Second pass was much better, still crazy to see all that lather building up on the razor blade itself with no guard. I thought to myself a few times that I have to be nuts to be doing this. I was right, so kept going.

Chewed up my Adams apple area pretty good, but the rest of the cheeks and neck went pretty decent with minor irritation and to my surprise, only 1 weeper! Of course, I have a Van Dyke, so there's the whole cheating by avoiding the hardest parts of the face thing. Let's just ignore that. Pretty sure I didn't take too much skin off during this trial run, but I do have a few tender patches. Tomorrow will tell me how much damage I did but I remain optimistic.

Anyway, I'll continue to practice with it on the weekends and improve my technique. I have a feeling what i learn from it will help me out with the shaves from all my razors. Thanks for the idea and the motivation to try something outside the norm! This is what makes the hobby so much fun, and I owe it all to you awesome B&B folks!

And here she is! She's all bite and no bark. The Silent Assassin.

Syx005 said:

View attachment 568433View attachment 568434View attachment 568435

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Wow! The Silent Assassin looks so cool!
I think I'll call my Souplex the Vampire Bat

And definitely to get the superb shaves devettes are capable of requires a change of technique from safety razors and also practice, practice, practice.

The rewards are absolutely fantastic and once you've got in a few good devette shaves all your shaving with other razors becomes better too - straights and R41 will now be a walk in the park for you.

The devette is utterly unforgiving but it is also elegant, beautiful, pure and capable of shaves you never even dreamed of before.

And Gytis has given me the opportunity to try those NOS Neva carbon blades.

Thank you my friend!
I'd forgotten how good carbon steel DE blades are with that squidgy slicing feel, and in the Vampire Bat Souplex that Neva blade really shines.

Now my face feels like it's been exfoliated, massaged and toned and I have the smartest 1930's shave in the 21st Century!

Surely the devette is The Greatest Shave On Earth

You welcome, Marcus! Happy to hear the Neva works well for you You can feel like shaving back in the USSR

Have been getting great results with the Fatip + UFO Kaiser Short handle devette for the last week or more. Tonight I decided to up the ante with the even heavier UFO Goliath handle. No negative effect from the extra weight; the shave was the same. Which tells me that, once your devette technique is solid, a little weight more or less in the razor doesn't make a dramatic difference in the shave. You adjust naturally, just as you do with a guarded DE razor.

That FaTip with that handle just looks so amazing!
What do use as a baseplate?

mjclark said:

That FaTip with that handle just looks so amazing!
What do use as a baseplate?

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The BBX base plate, always. Haven't been able to get my act together to modify the Rimei.

PS: I miss my ATT H1 and H2. Alas, the BBX base plate doesn't fit them, and I assume that the Rimei wouldn't either. If only Stan would come out with a guardless base plate for his line of ATT razors! That would be divine.

Just tried a 2013 R41 cap with the Souplex devette baseplate.
It doesn't look very elegant but what an amazing shave!
Again the small blade exposure really helps and this set up has given a really beautiful end result

I have my BBX set up for tonight's shave -- with the original handle. It's been a while since I used this elegant, long handle and I wonder if I'll find it more comfortable this time around.

Viseguy said:

I have my BBX set up for tonight's shave -- with the original handle. It's been a while since I used this elegant, long handle and I wonder if I'll find it more comfortable this time around.

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Went fine. Amazing how much of a cream puff the BBX is, compared to the Fatip-BBX devette. The BBX handle was OK. It's so long that the end of it bumped into my chest while I was shaving my neck, though.

Viseguy said:

Went fine. Amazing how much of a cream puff the BBX is, compared to the Fatip-BBX devette. The BBX handle was OK. It's so long that the end of it bumped into my chest while I was shaving my neck, though.

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It's so interesting to compare the behaviours of the different devettes.

What do you think makes the difference between the BBX and the FaTip?
Is it blade exposure?

mjclark said:

... What do you think makes the difference between the BBX and the FaTip?
Is it blade exposure?

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Blade exposure. It's got to be. The BBX's exposure is small compared to the Fatip's. Maybe I'm hallucinating, but it feels to me like there is a range of angles in which the BBX does not cut, or cuts minimally. Steep works, shallow works, but there's a range in between that doesn't. Whereas the mighty Fatip devette cuts any which way -- which is my preference. (For what it's worth, I have a friend in the UK whom I recently turned on to the BBX, and he's also taken to using the BBX base plate with a Fatip head.) I'm coming round to the view that the Fatip devette is the gold standard, but on days when I'm not at the top of my game, I'll revert to the ATT H1/H2 or Fatip or R41 with their normal base plates. I can see my BBX top caps and handles gathering dust.

Yes blade exposure it is then - my 2013 R41 top cap with the Souplex baseplate (and a washer!) makes an amazing devette and it has smaller blade exposure than the Souplex top cap (which works amazingly with the R41 baseplate - go figure!)

Today I have changed DE89 cap to cap of R41. Boy that is a huge improvement! This cap is visibly more flat and allows more shallow angle. And it is a bit wider, so less blade exposure here. When I first tried devette, I looked at both caps, still I did not see any difference between the two then except of the fact R41 cap needs a washer. So I used a cap of DE89.
I think I just got a new devette.