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Today I shaved with the oldest razor I've ever tried -- a remarkably clean 1927 Schick B-1 "Magazine Repeating Razor", the precursor to the Schick Injector that's become my main razor.

I picked up this remarkable razor on eBay recently (mine's brass but otherwise identical to the B-1 pictured above), in a slap-happy hoarding frenzy fueled by the spectacular shaves I've been getting lately from my 40's-era bakelite-handled E3 Injector loaded with a modified Feather disposable straight razor blade. By the time I sobered up, I'd scored a couple dozen Injectors from all over this storied razor's timeline, but the B-1 Magazine Repeating Razor is the oldest and most majestic of them all.

A heavy-duty brass and steel piece of mechanical beauty that shames today's all-plastic "shaving systems", the Schick B-1 is, like all pre-1955 Injectors (the ones made before Eversharp-Schick started going for a more mundane "windshield ice scraper" look), a thing of beauty that still works as well as it ever did despite nearly a century on its odometer.

Unfortunately, "as well as it ever did" means, at least in my B-1's case, not that great. Oh, it shaves -- just not very closely. Compared with the later E-series razors, the B-1 suffers from a more primitive head geometry and a safety bar that prevents the blade from really doing much at all. I shaved with-grain and against-grain with this thing and my face felt like I hadn't shaved at all. I started over again with my E-3 Injector, my Vulfix #2235 badger brush and some Taylor's Avocado shaving cream, and got a shave so close it's nine hours later and my face feels just as uncannily smooth as it did this morning.

But the shave's not the point with the B-1. This razor is so cool it's beyond belief. The head pivots 90 degrees to line up straight with the handle, and then an internal repeating magazine mechanism auto-loads a new blade just like Schick's original inspiration for his razor's design, the Army repeating rifle. The mechanism on my B-1 looks to be in good working order, but I don't have any of the blade magazines on hand, and they don't come up on eBay very often.

Fortunately, you can pop a modern Injector blade out of its magazine and slide it right into the B-1 since it's the same size as the old blades, though as I said, the shave won't exactly shock and awe. But any modern blade will fit perfectly.

I'd love to score an old magazine, though, just to see this baby in action. It's even cooler than the Injector -- you pivot the shave head up so it lines up with the body, jack the end cap at the bottom of the handle, and the internal magazine repeater loads a new blade right into the head through a slot at the top of the handle. It's wicked cool, and I'm dying to see it in action someday if I can locate some of the old blade magazines.

The Schick B-1 Magazine Repeating Razor is an engineering marvel, an elegant example of 1920's metalcraft, and a fascinating look at the design destined to evolve into the Schick Injector. That the B-1 can't shave worth a damn is beside the point. It's by far the coolest razor I've yoinked yet.