Merkur Hackress

Just had the best shave of my life with a fresh Feather blade in a Merkur Progress. One of the things that I don't like about my Progress is that when I tighten the knob all the way, the reading on the dial is "2." I've seen a lot of people posting complaints about this, with different numbers showing when they tighten the dial all the way up. I believe it should be at the "+" to the left of "1" on the dial. I didn't really care as I just a setting relative to where ever it tightens up to, but it would be nice to have it "zero out."

This morning I decided to try and do something about this other than to send the razor back as defective or anything else. So, what I did was pull the knob and shaft out of the end of the razor. I put one vise grip wrench around the shaft, and another smaller vise grip wrench around the dial where the numbers are. I was hoping that by twisting the dial in relation to the shaft I could get it to "zero out." It took a few times to get it to zero out perfectly, but it did when I put it together for the last time.

I call the result the Merkur "Hackress."

If you try this, I would recommend not tightening a vise grip wrench on the plastic knob as it would most likely break it. Also be sure to tighten the collar that holds the assembly into the shaft, or you could slip and slice yourself (which I did before working on it today.)

Enjoy.