Thank you for posting these bathroom sets as I had not seen or known about them before. 
Gem Razor Models
- Thread starter Ron R
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- #402
Ron R
I survived a lathey foreman
Very nice, thanks for sharing some history>I wonder if the clothing store still exist's with the on-slot of big box stores that came along and did some serious damage to small enterprises?
Have some great shaves!
Brooks Clothing Co. was sued by Brooks Brothers in the mid-1940s for trademark infringement. Brooks Brothers prevailed - it turned out that no one name "Brooks" had ever been connected in any way with Brooks Clothing Co., although the court did not find that the company had deliberately set out to take advantage of Brooks Brothers name and reputation.
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- #404
Ron R
I survived a lathey foreman
Interesting how some of these company's survived, Right now retail is going through the online buying the new way of buying products and box stores have even more of a hard time making ends meet.
Thanks for the feedback on that interesting Gem bathroom set you wondered across.
Have some great shaves!
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- #405
Ron R
I survived a lathey foreman
Finally received my GEM jr Lather catcher"New Bar" 1901 &1902 pat and it was in rough condition and because of my background as a repair Machinist...... I brought this interesting razor back to life. This is my first shave with a Gem Personna SS PTFE (1)and I have to be honest this razor is such a good shaver that if plastic did not come along I have know doubt they would still be MFG these. It's not overly aggressive(mid range) but efficient and smoothest combined. Could it be how I repaired or it's just naturally a winner I would say the later.I'm going to use it for over a week and do a evaluation on this "GEM".
I have some great ads for the time from @MacDaddy at B&B that he shared and researched on another thread and they are interesting.
Have some great Gem shaves!
Ron, that's absolutely amazing! Great looking razor.
One of the questions that got asked near me lately was prompted by the scads of CNC machined razors in all possible formats: "What would it take to re-create a classic Gem, stamped brass razor?" I guess for the CNC-heads it would mean the chance to CNC the dies.
But seriously, if industry could do it 120 years ago, I bet they could do it now. More to the point, I bet some hobbyist somewhere could set up a modified design to stamp out parts for heads that would have modern attachment posts (10-32 or 5x0.8 threads)...
I get it...cost of manufacture vs. what the customer will pay, and we can still get vintage Gems for $2.50. Anyway, great razor you have there; congratulations.
O.H.
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- #407
Ron R
I survived a lathey foreman
This is a light razor and the know how to create this razor in large volume is amazing. The script alone is beautiful and making the rolls with the script is not easy(they would preheat the brass so to soften it) and to punch and bend the angles...... it just amazing. The razor works very well so you have to give credit for pushing their technology & talent to the extreme for that era. Their chrome coatings are excellent and stick well for being used 10's of thousands of times scraping and dunked in hot water and thrown around and survive reasonable well.
Gem was at times way ahead in razor know how and Gillette was also good. Schick always amazed me how they folded metal so tightly with out damaging the finish and were leaders in that field of expertise and produce some excellent hardware. CNC machines can do some amazing machining but tool & die making manually is still out there and the robotics have not reached that level IMO.
CNC machining is very expensive and a crash of a piece of equipment from poor operator programming or not paying attention almost does not make sense. I worked in those places where they used CNC for oilfield MFG and that is were they shine with a good operator, I did see some wild screw ups that are hard to explain and would be boring to most.
Have some great shaves!
Gem was at times way ahead in razor know how and Gillette was also good. Schick always amazed me how they folded metal so tightly with out damaging the finish and were leaders in that field of expertise and produce some excellent hardware. CNC machines can do some amazing machining but tool & die making manually is still out there and the robotics have not reached that level IMO.
CNC machining is very expensive and a crash of a piece of equipment from poor operator programming or not paying attention almost does not make sense. I worked in those places where they used CNC for oilfield MFG and that is were they shine with a good operator, I did see some wild screw ups that are hard to explain and would be boring to most.
Have some great shaves!
When I got into rail road watches from the 1800's my respect for what was being done in the Civil War era of manufacturing changed forever.
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- #409
Great information, thanks for posting it !
Did you get any collaboration from @jmudrick since he has studied the GEM razor history extensively?
I believe there is or should be a corrected version showing changes to Clog Pruf (1940), Peerless (1945) and a couple others.
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- #413
Ron R
I survived a lathey foreman
Twelvefret
New
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Here is a great time line for GEM & Everready razors that has been updated and some effort went into this by @mata_66 and we will all appreciate this reference and there could be a few changes if needed.
View attachment 968644
Have some great shaves!
Did you get any collaboration from @jmudrick since he has studied the GEM razor history extensively?
I have to say that @mata_66 did the corrections and @jmudrick no doubt contributed and for me with my quoting old records the boys took it on themselves to keep correcting my old statements and decided to make the updates and @mata_66 gave me the OK to publish the update and it will benefit us all.
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Where all plating versions (gold wash, chrome, brass) introduced at the same time?
There are some models which have "Hold Flat Against Face" and "Place Flat Against Face" stamped into the cap. Do we know when these were issued?
First question, no first issue of MMOC is gold plated. I believe there was soon after a luxury set with a chrome razor as ads c1934 mention new pricing for chrome razors formerly only available in such a luxury set. I have not seen it.
My hunch is that the "Hold Flat" models were issued to distributors and or retailers. The only one I can confidently date is my 1932 set, so.not a first issue.
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Mine is gold wash/plated with bumps.
Great information, thank you very much! Do I understand this right, that the first issue MMOC were the all brass models?
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- #418
Ron R
I survived a lathey foreman
Some of the razors that had script stamped on the top cap are oddities and rare and a lot of early brass colored razors had a gold wash to make them more appealing to the eye and finding ads for everything is hard to pin point exact dates would take extensive newspaper & magazine archive searching that I do not have locally and possible internet searching.
Have some great shaves!
I've dated most all of the cases at this point, I'll have to collect data in one place. I'm not aware of brass razors without gold wash (or Chrome). It's a very thin wash
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