I recently acquired a Merkur travel razor that produced a very mild shaving profile, even with a Feather blade. Investigating online groups, shimming seemed a very easy way to increase the aggressiveness. Being an engineer, I wanted to measure stuff, so here is some of what I think I have discovered:
- Measured with a caliper (not a micrometer), most blades I use are .005" thick, plus or minus .001".
- For making shims, normal scissors are usable for trimming off the sharp bits.
- For the Merkur travel razor (love the compact size), cutting at the big notch between the sharp bit and the body of a blade still covers the contact points. Make sure you note this if you are using other razors. The shim goes _below_ the blade, so the top plate still determines the blade angle.
- For reference, a Merkur Progress has a 1mm per inch thread and goes from 1 to 5 on the dial in 270 degrees, so a one step is about .006".
That's the quantitative stuff. Now my opinion:
This razor is so mild that the 5 o'clock shadow comes around noon. On the positive side, you will never be spending 10 minutes tending to a weeper/cut while you're prepping for the business meeting.
Two shims and the razor is still really mild, but getting close to a Progress at 2. A shim is almost a click and a Progress setting of three seems to be generally thought of as medium aggressive. YMMV
Hope this helps!
Quantitative shimming information
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