Received a bias pin 7 O'clock razor today in bakelite case . The razor is in really good shape and it got me thinking about how well this razor was preserved .Searched through my razors and came up with six 7 O'clock razors spanning 109 years . 7 O'clock has had a good run and produced some interesting razors .Not sure of when they became associated with Gillette but the brand has endured and Gillette is still making DEs under the 7 O'clock brand .
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Top Center : my sentimental favorite ,a silver plated single edge which has a built in strop in the lid ,my research put it at around 1907, beautiful presentation and came with a blade in good shape but haven't stropped it ,looks like it would take a de-spined Gem blade .Something to look forward to!
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Glenn
I have one of the british-made SE 7 O'Clock razors - it was an early razor by none other than inventor Henry Jacques Gaisman, president of Auto Strop. The 7 O'Clock TM probably went over to Gillette during the period that Gillette infringed Gaisman's Probak blade patents and were forced to "buy out" Auto Strop (it was actually Auto Strop's takeover of Gillette). I wish I could lay hands on one of the blades for this razor to compare with an original Valet blade. The NOS Valet blades fit the blade receiver but extend beyond the stops. I can engineer a de-spined Gem blade to fit properly, the shave is quite mild. Makes me think that the original 7 O'clock blade was slightly smaller or else the cutouts were placed closer to the center of the side edges.
Could a feather spineless fit?
Proprietary blades meant higher profit, that's almost certainly what he was thinking.
Yes, but why design two proprietary blades for two different in-house razors? He'd still sell the same number of blades without the additional tooling costs of running off two similar blades.