Parker SR1 Barber Razor
As described in our general page about Parker shavettes, the Parker SR1 shavette razor is made almost completely out of stainless steel.
The blade arms, blade arm clip, and handle are all stainless steel. The only part that isn’t made out of stainless steel are the pins that hold the two halves of the handle together, along with attaching the handle to the blade arms, the pin that attaches the blade arm clip to the blade arms and the position pins that are mounted onto one of the blade arms.
The official name of the SR1 is the “SR1 Barber Razor”, although you rarely see it called that. It’s more commonly referred to as the Parker SR1, Parker SR1 Stainless Steel Straight Razor, Parker SR1 Straight Razor, and numerous other combinations.
I’m not particularly fond of people calling it a straight razor because it’s not. A straight razor is made out of one continuous piece of steel that needs to be honed in order to produce a “shave ready” edge. Shavettes, on the other hand, use replaceable blade. I think this is a distinction that should be respected, but often is not.
Blades
Shark Blade
The SR1 takes half of a DE blade. A lot of times you will find the SR1 being sold with 5 shark blades. The blades that came with mine were only one-sided so you didn’t have to break them in half as you would normally do with regular DE blades.
Disassembly
The Parker SR1 isn’t built to be disassembled. In order to take it apart you would have to drill out the pins that are holding it together. I’m not sure why someone would want to take it apart other than to possibly replace the handle with some custom handles.
Blade Insertion/Removal
SR1 Completely Opened
To insert or remove the blade the first thing you have to do is to lift up the blade arm clip.
The blade arm clip fits rather snugly so you should put your thumb in the little dip behind the blade, so you can have some leverage to pull the blade arm clip up.
***Warning – You need to be careful that your thumb doesn’t slip other wise you can end up with a nasty cut.***
The second step is to separate the blade arms. You have to pull the blade arms far enough apart that the Position Pins on one blade arm are no longer in the corresponding holes on the other blade arm.
At this point you’ll be able to pivot the blade arms away from each other. From here you either need to remove the blade if you are taking the blade out, or position the blade against the position pins.
Blade Inserted
Once the blade is inserted or removed, you just reverse the process to close the razor back up.
The biggest thing to be careful of is to make sure that the blade remains in its proper position against the position pins while you are closing the blade arms together.
Once you have the blade arms together you can secure them together with the blade arm clip.
Reviews
Read our Parker SR1 review. In this review we discuss in depth, what we like and dislike about the Parker SR1 and whether we would recommend it as a shaving razor.