09-04-2025, 01:01 AM
(09-03-2025, 04:28 PM)Jayaruh Wrote:(09-03-2025, 03:37 PM)Rocketman Wrote: SEptember!! I can jump on board today as well! (When I can’t match Jayaruh I will repeat the shave of the day before.)
The 1914 was darn near my first SE and for sure one of my favourites. I have a trusty beat up 1st gen I have used for many years, but today to celebrate SEptember I am going to use a Canadian manufactured Ever Ready Safety Razor co. Ltd. 1914 model manufactured in Toronto. There aren’t many of these kicking around so I look forward to the shave! I will use a new PTFE GEM and the same Rubberset as yesterday, but I swapped in a mug of old Williams in honor of the American roots of the ER design and the founder of TOST, our very own Fuzzy Wchnu. Happy shaves!
And it almost hit frost here last night, so HOT Water!!! And as per the instructions, I will shave with JOY!
That is a very nice setup you have there. I find it hard to open my ER 1914. They have very strong springs. I love that box of Radio Blades you have. Those first SE blades did not have any cutouts in them. The ER has those little blade holders to prevent the blade from falling out during loading and unloading. Modern SE's with cutouts tend to fall out. I just put some Scotch tape over the cut outs and the problem is solved. SEptember is going to be fun. I am going to use my ER 1924 tomorrow.
The early blades from about 1908 up until WW1 (maybe later in 1919 with the big mergers) were all solid rectangles like these ER blades. Gem,Star, ER, everybody used them. Then it was American Safety Razor themselves that developed a blade that would keep their various razor lines competing against themselves. They created a cutout blade specifically so ER razors wouldn’t take them. ER wrangled that angle too. You can see in the instruction sheet they say other blades won’t fit their razors - they were referring to the new cutouts which pretty much everyone else started to use. ASR was successfully sued big time in the 1920s for essentially swindling folks with advertising claiming each of the razor lines was better than the other They had let the consumers land wherever they thought best. But each customer decision brought them back to ASR - they just didn’t realize. Early American ingenuity I suppose!
Rather than scotch tape I use a piece of plastic cut from a trading card protector sleeve and just slide it in with the blade. They last a long time. If you look closely you can see it mounted on the blade.
1924 eh? Well I can do that!
Rocketman - a simple Pogonaut in search of the ultimate destubbilization system.