The Gibbs Plus/Minus Razor

I received a Gibbs Plus/Minus razor from one of my customers last week and thought it may be of some interest on the forum. It is a fixed head razor but has two different blade exposures. The Plus side is a bit more aggressive and the Minus side a little more tame. This particular model of Gibbs razor takes a proprietary blade while my Gibbs Click Pen razor takes standard DE blades. Leave it to the French. Fortunately, Harvey included about 100 of the Proprietary blades so I should be able to use this razor for "mourning" shaves for a long time to come.

 

Very cool looking razor! I really like the big plus sign on it! Please report on the shave!

 

My first shave was a bit rough but the second shave was much smoother. The major downside to this razor is that it takes a proprietary blade so I cannot load it with my favorite blade (unless I want to risk using a dremel on a modern blade to make it fit).

 

Interesting concept. I would think that the plus /minus signs on top are a necessity. You wouldn't want to be guessing as to which is which, especially at 5:30 in the morning when you are half awake. I would have to use the plus side on my cheeks and chin, then flip it over to the minus side for my neck. Cool!

 

Very intresting, can you post a picture of the blades?

 

Sure. I will try and do that tomorrow.

 

Very interesting looking razor, the best of two worlds.

 

Sounds similar in concept to the iKon bar/comb razors. From reading Phil's posts in the SOTD thread, I take it that the iKon is a better shaver so far?

 

Here is a comparative picture of a standard DE blade (Personna Med Prep in this case) and a Proprietary Gibbs blade. The differences are slight but enough that a regular blade does not fit in the Plus/Minus razor (note the notches on the tabs of the Gibbs blade).

 

Two lapped steel plates with matching notches in the ends and square punch and you can make blades for that from standard DE blades.
I zoned out and came up with a plan for that, while looking at the pic.

The Neillite 400 was a Bakelite 3 piece DE that used standard DE blades and had one side was mild and the other was aggressive.
It's one of my favorite razors.

 

As I was saying... if you take a pair of good scissors or kitchen shears and trim the "white" areas off the blade ends of the Personna it will fit the Gibbs w/o any problems. No need to "dremel" anything. All you do after that is eyeball the blade exposure to make sure it's even and shave away.
And it's nice to see you here Goose