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1947 Gillette Techmatic

Fairwind

Fairwind

Has anyone seen or used one of these? It's a DE injector it seems. How do you reload the injector or did you need to buy a pre-loaded injector like a SE?

From Mr Razor
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Fairwind

Fairwind

So after reading the other 2 threads I'm convinced these 2 razors were internal company pass arounds to see how they performed. I'm guessing they didn't get the glowing reports the inventors were looking for coupled with the expense to make them led to them being put away. Some how the testers managed to keep them instead of returning them to the lab and 65 years later found their way to Ebay.

They could have made a bundle if they had sent them to Heritage Auctions as proto-types but maybe Gillette would have gone after them as stolen property. Since there are only 2 known to the world I'll wager we're looking at a high 5 figure maybe 6 figure auction value at Heritage Auction or another major auction house.

@wishbone you my friend are a very lucky collector, it's like finding the Mona Lisa at Goodwill. :a14:
 
KQY61

KQY61

Hi,

I saw one for sale on eBay back in 2012 (I think, long ago anyway) which was $30k BIN and the auction ended days early.

Stan

Edit: what I saw was on eBay US, so not the one linked above which was on eBay UK.
 
R

romsitsa

Hello,

this is the patent for the razor and dispenser. According to the patent regular DE blades could be also loaded by hand.
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/fd/a7/e8/22a35c9cefa69a/US2397890.pdf

Basically they invented a razor and dispenser that could load and unload the blade while minimising the risk of damage.
Imho the design has a massive drawback, namely it required totally new parts and more than likely new machines to produce them.
So I think some genius at Gillette realised that adding two notches to the existing TTO design and a redesigned dispenser would also allow to store and load blades without touching them and they settled with the Superspeed.

Adam
 
Last edited by a moderator:
wishbone

wishbone

Fellas .....It's been a long while since I logged in ..... but this definitely caught my interest. There is another almost complete set out there .... shown on pinterest ..... Which has the 'shipper', if you will, on the blade injector still.

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@Fairwind ...... Every time I look at mine I have a Life of Brian moment ...... i think: "You lucky, lucky b***ard!" :001_smile
 
Useless shaver

Useless shaver

wishbone said:
Fellas .....It's been a long while since I logged in ..... but this definitely caught my interest. There is another almost complete set out there .... shown on pinterest ..... Which has the 'shipper', if you will, on the blade injector still.

proxy.php


@Fairwind ...... Every time I look at mine I have a Life of Brian moment ...... i think: "You lucky, lucky b***ard!" :001_smile
Click to expand...

Come on, Simon... have a try, they're cheap... aren't they? And a man needs a backup...:001_tongu
 
Fairwind

Fairwind

Simon have you had it officially appraised by a Auction House? Have you shaved with it and how did it do?
 
wishbone

wishbone

JM ...... I'm looking for one in gold now :001_302:

Dan,

I've not had it appraised, no ...... but here's the shave review I posted in the original thread:

wishbone said:
When I shaved with this razor, it was a given that it wasn't going to be my go to, but I certainly intended to play with it before cleaning it and putting it away and that adjustment scale on the TTO knob was far too tempting to leave alone.

I shave every two days, in four passes; with, across, 45 degrees across/against and then directly against the grain. I've been shaving with a toggle I acquired for the last couple of weeks and, like any of my adjustables, during my shave the adjustment ring goes 7-9, 5-7, 4-5, 1-3 or thereabout for each respective pass, depending on which blade I have loaded. The adjustment scale on this Techmatic, without a blade loaded, sits perfectly against the far right marker. With a Feather in it, it sits at two right of dead centre. So, to start off, I dialled it back to the far left marker on the scale. The blade gap widens as a result of the blade straightening up and moving away from the safety bar. I've seen many a post in various forums from people experimenting with the same principle of backing off on handles to affect the same result, with opinions ranging from satisfied to terrified in varying degrees. Those experiments relied upon the spring tension of the blade alone to keep the blade still and the razor still in one piece which, in modern blades, is practically negligible; but on this razor, that's been taken care of and the centre length of the blade is clamped tight, in a very specific way, to the blade tray so that the head is free to set the angle as it moves up and down through adjustment.

As a result of this, I fully expected to have to angle the razor a bit further away from my face so to compensate for the blade angle. Strangely enough, I found I brought the angle down instead. This razor doesn't have the heft of my Mergress XL, but it sure felt like I was shaving with it by the way it held in my hand and angled close in. So much so, I found myself holding it up to the light a couple of times to see which way the blade edge was pointing. Surely enough, though ....... This thing was taking whiskers off nice and cleanly. Second pass, I left the dial where it was; third pass I backed it off to one left of centre and, for the last pass, I set it back to fully tight. Funnily enough, the front of my cheeks and up over my cheekbones were already smooth after the third. Usually I have a tiny touch left that's gone in a second on the past pass. Also, my lower neck, either side of my Adam's Apple is a bugger 'cos I ride my motorbike all week and the strap can irritate the hell out of it if I try too hard to get it smooth. After the last pass, it was shaved completely, zero irritation and I hadn't had to walk on the proverbial eggshells around it, so to speak. That's when it hit me that the razor I had in my hand was, after all, a Tech. With the razor closed up tight, it's about as mild a shave as it gets.

That adjustment system really impressed me though ........ Throughout the entire shave, not once did that knob shift out of the position I'd set it at. Between the two springs, it's held nice and firm wherever you leave it. I gave it a wiggle a few times too, just to see what it would take to move it and it's a lot more then just a pinky on the bottom of the razor to steady it that will cause the adjustment to go out. It's very similar to the principle Merkur use in the progress, only that they refined it to keep the blade angle constant. The only thing that's missing really is the 'click' of the adjuster ...... But we know they got 'round to that eventually.
Click to expand...
 
72plymsatellite

72plymsatellite

wishbone said:
JM ...... I'm looking for one in gold now :001_302:

Dan,

I've not had it appraised, no ...... but here's the shave review I posted in the original thread:
Click to expand...

I have thought about using mine as well. generally, I don't like using razors from my collection that are rare enough that it will take another lifetime to replace. my fear is that I would drop it. same reason I don't use any of my engraved razors. Justin uses some of the more rare razors from his collection and I think he's crazy. I also don't want to have to clean it afterwards. lol
 
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