Merkur Finish Quality?

[mdw15]

We are so well informed because of this site, mainly, that we can afford to luxuriate in a calm discussion of what we know and what we believe to be so. We don't have to be frustrated about the unknowable or feel pressured to fill in the gaps with convenient conclusions.

I've owned a number of Progress/Mergress razors. I own two Mergress razors currently. They look good and work great, which for me anyway is a good deal. I grew up watching with real interest machinests and tool and die makers do their thing, although I still couldn't make a basic hammerhead out of a block of metal in high school shop class.

I enjoy reading about or observing the process of making pretty much everything even though I can't make pretty much anything.

I agree with crfcom's observations about the various razor makers. Merkur has had a successful formula for many years. Its trade-offs make sense to the company, and certainly have worked to my advantage, and others, in the sense that Merkur's production techniques and choices have given us a number of razors of classic design and with no discernible manufacturing defects.

Of course, there are the others. And Merkur's aforementioned lame or at least inconsistent PR/customer service. Life is complicated.

 

[seanusa]

I have 8 Merkur DE's, and never a problem with any of them. From what I've read on the forums if there is ever a problem with a Merkur, either the vendor or the company itself has taken care of it.

Good point! 80 years down the road any of the Merkur's that didn't make it wont be around and the quality ones will be all that's left and may very well get the same praise for lasting a lifetime while other newer mass produced products will get ostracized for statistical defects that are just the nature of mass production vs. craftsmanship. I'm not excusing Merkur for a defective product but rather making a statement about how history can be perceived.

 

[seanusa]

I think there is this perception that razors have to last lifetimes. How many millions of Gillette razors were made that never made it that far? A lot.

Would it be nice that Merkur made a plated brass razor? Sure. Not going to happen though. Will a plated Zamak razor last your lifetime? Probably. There are enough vintage ones floating around to support that assumption.

Sorry, my post above was meant to respond to this quote, need more coffee I guess. =)

 

[rcl65]

I have a Mergress on order from Lee's and the plating has been on my mind. I've been using a Merkur 31C and am not impressed with the finish quality. My hope is the adjustable head will be a better quality.
I'm just sayin'.

 

[seanusa]

I have seen sites where you can get your razor re-plated for around $50, so lets say I have finish issues but the functionality of the razor is OK I would be very tempted to have a re-plate done thus making it a lifetime razor. Yeah I would be out around $100 for the razor and plating but also I could do a black rhodium plate for a little more and then its not just a re-plated Merkur but a custom piece that should last a long long time. I think this option beats buying another razor or just giving up on the slant head, especially if I like it.

 

[mdw15]

Preserving an already worthy razor for a lifetime, or for another lifetime, is an obtainable goal at such prices.

 

[talibeard]

I have seen sites where you can get your razor re-plated for around $50, so lets say I have finish issues but the functionality of the razor is OK I would be very tempted to have a re-plate done thus making it a lifetime razor. Yeah I would be out around $100 for the razor and plating but also I could do a black rhodium plate for a little more and then its not just a re-plated Merkur but a custom piece that should last a long long time. I think this option beats buying another razor or just giving up on the slant head, especially if I like it.

Just replating will probably not do it. The old plating has to be completely removed and, at least as important as there lies the problem imo, the parts have to be repolished as well till all the small pits and cracks are gone.

 

[seanusa]

I take it that's not part of the re-plate process? If I were to re-finish something for someone it would seem natural to remove the old finish first as with wood work, but I'm not much of a metal worker so I don't know, anyone out there do re-plating know more about this?

 

[chilliman64]

don't worry about it - a few cases of poorly finished razors does not mean they are all badly finished. more cars get recalled than razors.

 

[dynagroove]

don't worry about it - a few cases of poorly finished razors does not mean they are all badly finished. more cars get recalled than razors.

I agree, more cars are recalled than razors. However, this is not due to the general quality of cars vs. DE razors. IMHO, the comparison is just not valid. Cars are made in significantly higher numbers than DE razors, so the chances of an issue with a car go up simply based on numbers. A more significant influence is the complexity of a car vs. a DE razor. A razor has a handful of non-moving parts that are manufactured, plated, and then assembled - pretty simplistic. A typical car has over 30,000 parts, many of them moving, electronic, etc. The potential for recall is of course way higher for a car than a razor.

I have several Merkur razors and have not had a problem with any of them. However, what does concern me beyond the extremely poor customer service, is the fact that I don't hear the same corrosion issues about Muhle, Edwin Jagger, vintage Gillettes, and even the Cadet razors. Why can everyone else seem to produce a flawless razor pretty much all of the time, but Merkur is hit or miss.

Just my $0.02.

 

[seanusa]

Well so far the poll is at 88% percent saying that they have no issues with Merkur razors. This isn't perfect but from what I had read is better than I thought it would be.

 

[chilliman64]

I agree, more cars are recalled than razors. However, this is not due to the general quality of cars vs. DE razors. IMHO, the comparison is just not valid. Cars are made in significantly higher numbers than DE razors, so the chances of an issue with a car go up simply based on numbers. A more significant influence is the complexity of a car vs. a DE razor. A razor has a handful of non-moving parts that are manufactured, plated, and then assembled - pretty simplistic. A typical car has over 30,000 parts, many of them moving, electronic, etc. The potential for recall is of course way higher for a car than a razor.

I have several Merkur razors and have not had a problem with any of them. However, what does concern me beyond the extremely poor customer service, is the fact that I don't hear the same corrosion issues about Muhle, Edwin Jagger, vintage Gillettes, and even the Cadet razors. Why can everyone else seem to produce a flawless razor pretty much all of the time, but Merkur is hit or miss.

Just my $0.02.

I thought this topic was about the finish, not the customer service...

of course though you spend a lot more money on a car, and they have many more highly qualified engineers and designers working on them, plus millions of dollars of machinery, and production errors could cost many lives, also, I didn't mention anything about electronics or moving parts etc - seems you could have disagreed with me on many more points of difference and you missed your chance. nonetheless, thanks for the critique.

since it is ok to critique - if Merkur finish quality is 'hit or miss' then you are saying that due to the poor quality of the finish it is a 50/50 chance of getting a good one... that's interesting. I have several and they are all good, guess I beat the odds!

 

[seanusa]

so far according to my poll its about a 88% to 12% chance with a problem free finish in the lead that's a touch better than 50/50

 

[dynagroove]

I thought this topic was about the finish, not the customer service...

of course though you spend a lot more money on a car, and they have many more highly qualified engineers and designers working on them, plus millions of dollars of machinery, and production errors could cost many lives, also, I didn't mention anything about electronics or moving parts etc - seems you could have disagreed with me on many more points of difference and you missed your chance. nonetheless, thanks for the critique.

since it is ok to critique - if Merkur finish quality is 'hit or miss' then you are saying that due to the poor quality of the finish it is a 50/50 chance of getting a good one... that's interesting. I have several and they are all good, guess I beat the odds!

Yup, it's OK to critique here on the Internet, as long as we are all polite - which I consider this discussion to be 100%. Sure, my points on why I feel the comparison between a car and a DE razor is not really valid were simplistic and did not cover every possible avenue. I, however, did not disagree with you on any points that you made in your original post. I simply stated that, in my honest opinion, comparing the recall rate of cars to DE razors is just not relavent to Merkur's quality control issues.

As I stated above, I also own several Merkurs and I have not had a single problem with any one of them. "Hit or miss" does not = 50/50, "hit or miss" according to a popular english language dictionary (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hit-or-miss) means: "Marked by a lack of care, accuracy, or organization; random". This seems fittingly appropriate for the issues that a small number of Merkur users have experienced. Again, I'm totally fine with you critiquing my post. I'm not fine with you putting words in my mouth about what "hit or miss" means.

My speculation stands: I infrequently hear of plating issues with Muhle, Edwin Jagger, vintage Gillette, or even a less expensive Cadet razor as I frequently do with Merkur. Why is that? There could be lots of reasons, but I'll leave those to others as I don't want to give a potentially incomplete listing of possibilities.

Again, this is simply my opinion and not a personal attack on you or your thought process. This is after all a discussion forum.

 

[fivespdcat]

On cars, defects are counted in ppm, as in parts per million and more than 5 is considered high. So 12% is astronomical in that sense. I am one of the unlucky ones and no I could not vote twice, I've had two Merkurs and both had corrosion issues. The first one I thought lasted an acceptable amount approximately 8 years, the second one lasted for two years, but the timing is misleading. I've only shaved with it maybe 5 times and the plating already is falling apart and the head is corroding. In my opinion this is not a case of factory defects getting out and causing failures, but it is a case of poor design. A razor company should include hard water and soap scum and other normal bathroom fluids in their design considerations. These normally occurring environments should not be the cause for failure and are not acceptable to me. I have bathroom faucets that have no issues after decades in the same water, but a razor that costs just as much fails in less than 5 uses.

I do not buy Merkurs anymore, because they don't design for use. They blame the customer, when it is they that do not understand the environment, even though they should be the expert. It is unacceptable for Merkur to have such lame excuses such as soap, hard water or any other household chemical caused the failure. They should be robust against these items.

 

[chilliman64]

funny though, if you asked how many merkur buyers had build quality issues as a percentage of all sales and did the same with new car buyers I wonder what would be higher? my guess is cars. so we are ok with an item costing many thousands of dollars having quality issues but for an item costing fifty bucks that is unacceptable... the point of my first post was just that when comparing razors to cars. for my money I'd much rather my car was a better product than my razor - sorry for the digression.

I do think though that modern razor makers do not want their product to last as long as the razors of old, hence the poorer quality - maybe merkur's unreliable quality is a form of built in obsolescence. their are many that find merkur blades to be poor, let's hope that the razors themselves don't continue to deteriorate.

 

[fivespdcat]

funny though, if you asked how many merkur buyers had build quality issues as a percentage of all sales and did the same with new car buyers I wonder what would be higher? my guess is cars. so we are ok with an item costing many thousands of dollars having quality issues but for an item costing fifty bucks that is unacceptable... the point of my first post was just that when comparing razors to cars. for my money I'd much rather my car was a better product than my razor - sorry for the digression.

I do think though that modern razor makers do not want their product to last as long as the razors of old, hence the poorer quality - maybe merkur's unreliable quality is a form of built in obsolescence. their are many that find merkur blades to be poor, let's hope that the razors themselves don't continue to deteriorate.

Lol! This is like comparing an ant farm to feeding the world. You're car is a better product without a doubt. A cars has thousands of parts that are in ambient temperatures from -40c to 140c or more, with actuall component
temps in excess of 1000c in some locations. It must run in sleet, snow, rain, sun, etc without a complaint. The AC must cool to 65 when it's 130 outside and warm to 80 when it's minus 20. It can't die on the mountain because your at 20k feet or 150 feet below sea level in Death Valley with your family towing a trailer that's 2x the capacity of the vehicle. It's actually comical that you compare a 3 piece razor that has to live in water and soap for its life to a car.

You spend over 1000 hours in a car before your 3/36 is up and then compare a razor? Wow, I wish it were so simple. I wish my Merkur would last 36 hours in water, alas it lasted less then 2 in its native environment. Find me a car that doesn't even make it off the car carrier before total catastrophic failure and maybe we have a comparison.

if a razor were a part of a car, it would cost $0.25, last a minimum of 15 years in the worst environments you could ever think of with a failure rate of less than 5% at end of life. This razor clearly never underwent any testing, because if you dropped a hundred Merkurs in a hard water bath for 100 hours I don't think you would even get 75% survival rate.

hell, my Knipex pliers are cold forged, plated and assembled in Germany at a similar cost and I wouldn't have to worry about my tools taking a little bath and then being wiped down. They would last decades or more in such a pampered environment as most razors live.

 

[Arcadies]

I've owned five Merkurs.

2 Futurs
1 23c
1 37c
1 Progress

Four of them had flawless plating and no problems.

however, the 37c had a small rough spot on the ridges on one side of the cap that looked almost like bubbling, kind of like it came out of the mold with rough spots or chunks left on it and they plated over it.

 

[Wouter]

Talking about the QC of merkur:

Because my first 23c had a crooked handle, I had to sent it back. The new one the vendor sent me had a spot with no chrome which will definitely going to rust because its all made of zinc.

or..it's just bad luck.

 

[seanusa]

well I Just got my razors today and so far nothing looks suspect except for a few tool marks under the chrome