Some history and random thoughts on adjustable safety razors.

I'm starting this page by saying that all razors that curve or distort the blade when you close and/or tighten them up are Adjustable.
So why don't I collect all razors - I collect razors that were or are sold as Adjustable or due to something in their mechanism have some sort of blade tensioning mechanism.

Adjustable razors go back to the 19^th Century. Most, if not all Lather Catchers are adjustable, they had to be to account for blade wear as they were been used and sharpened.

Very broadly speaking, there are three different adjustment systems, the Gibbs type, The Apollo/Walbusch/Merkur type and the Gillette type.
There are others but they are generally limited to specific brands and I'm not going to touch on them here. (may be an article for another day).

This is a copy of the Gillette Advert in the 01st April 1911 edition of The Literary Digest. It's the earliest reference that I could find mentioning "Adjustability". (Clicking on the image will open a large version in a new window) A single razor that catered for various beards was the Razor Manufacturers goal going back to the early 1900's where Gillette advertised that loosening the twist knob a bit would alter the aggressiveness of the razor. This was fine at the time as the blades at the time were thicker and had more spring in them. When thin blades were introduced in very late 1929/very early 1930 we could no longer rely on the ridgidity of the blade to cater for the gap. Some sort of mechanism needed to be in place to cater for this.

Looking through patents and talking about razors that would take a "disposable type" blade, my earliest "gap adjustable" razor would be the Single edge Finney or Superman. The patent was granted on January 21, 1913. They are the same razor sold under different brands.

The Krytyk has a patent dating back to July 18, 1911 but this is on the swivel part of the head not the gap adjustable piece.

If we move onto Double Edge blades the first patent that I've found for a Gap Adjustable razor is the Eclipse Red Ring (The Ryley's patent is on the swivel part not the adjustable part). The patent on the Eclipse has a spring mechanism on the posts but its not on any of the Eclpises that I have.

The 1935 Gibbs is the first patent that I can find that has some sort of mechanism that keeps tension on the blade while opening the gap.

The Adjustable "era" came to an end in 1988 when Gillette stopped producing adjustable razors. From that point the only "new" adjustable that was available was the Merkur Progress and Futur and maybe the East German razors (but their history is sketcky).

In about 2016, the Parker Variant was introduced and it marked the beginning of the modern adjustables.