.

Ever since Andy Samuels first wrote about his experiment with putting a modified Feather disposable straight razor blade in his Schick Injector razor, a handful of shavegeeks have tried this trick with varying degrees of success. I had terrible luck with a Feather Professional blade in my Type E3 Injector, but amazing results with Feather's Pro Guard and Pro Super blades. Chris Moss tried a Professional in his E3 and got a great shave. Other guys have gotten great shaves with certain combos of Injectors and Feathers, while others tried it and got lousy shaves.

Clearly, the tolerances of these old Injectors is all over the map. I lucked out with the first Injector I bought on eBay, because it shaves like a dream whether you feed it standard Schick blades or the scary-sharp Feathers. But other Injectors I've won on eBay since have been all over the map --- some are obviously bent out of shape, while some are subtly off in certain ways that really matter when it comes time to put blade to face. You can eyeball these old razors all you want, but in the end, you have to load a blade and put razor to face to determine if it's a winner or not. Of the seven Injectors of varying vintage I've scored so far, I'd say two E3s are keepers. Which makes them considerably more expensive than the $5 I paid for them, but when you consider that the $120 Merkur Vision DE, a very fine razor indeed, can't shave me as closely and comfortably as these old Injectors, whatever I paid for them was a bargain twice over.