NEW Deluxe - guard plate variations?

I was trying out Milady Frankenstein this morning, attached to a Mühle R89 handle. After I finished the shave I noticed that the bottom of the plate looked different than my NEW De Luxe (Belmont/Criterion style). So I took out all my NEW Deluxe examples and compared the heads. It looks like the width of the solid portion of the guard plate changed sometime between 1930 and 1935. The same variations appear in my ca. 1930 Tuckaway-style examples, and in my ca. 1935 red-black Deluxe. This photo might help:



Is there an accepted term for the middle part of the guard plate? On the pre-patent NEW Deluxe, ca. 1930, it appears to be about 17-mm. On the later example with patent numbers, ca. 1935, it appears to be narrower at 15-mm. If you turn the plate over, the tops are indistinguishable at 17-mm. This means that the cut-out between the teeth is also different: squared-off ca. 1930 and sloped ca. 1935. The general effect is to make the teeth look longer on the ca. 1935 plates, even though every other dimension seems to be identical.

While I was at it, I weighted the heads. Both of my ca. 1930 Tuckaway-style examples came in at exactly 34.7-g. Meanwhile the head from the ca. 1935 red-black set was 35.6-g and the newest ca. 1935 head (Milady Frankenstein) was 35.8-g.

These differences may affect the shave, too. This morning I found Milady Frankenstein a bit more aggressive than I was expecting. Or possibly this razor wants to renegotiate its nickname....

Wow, that's pretty noticeably different there. I'll make the water even muddier, though, since the DeLuxe Red & Black that I have has the same patent number stamping as your narrower one above, but is just as wide as every other NEW DeLuxe head that I have.

I wonder if that accounts for the slight weight difference between yours (35.6g) and mine (37g). (My scale doesn't report fractional grams, so I weigh things multiple times till I get a reasonably consistent number. With this head I got 36g twice and 37g three or four times, so in reality it's probably somewhere between the two.)

I wonder how long before we finally get every detail noticed about these gillettes. Identifying them has become a science with so many variations of so many models. Just like the differences in the FB knobs. It's extensive, but it's a fun little adventure.

Oh well - with five examples I thought I had the bases covered. I also wondered if the narrow... uh, isthmus might be peculiar to the lady sets. But my red-black also has it. I am fairly confident that it is not a changeling, simply because it came with a matching, fully-split handle. I would expect someone faking a set to include a better handle, if at all possible.

One other observation: it seems odd that my narrow-isthmus heads are just a little heavier than the wider ones, weighed with the same scale. I would expect machining away a little more brass to result in a lighter head. Maybe a different grade of brass?

Great information. Thanks.

Wow, that is some great work. I always though that hey were identical with no variations whatsoever. Maybe there may have been a production specs error, or can these be a rare razors series that we may not know about?

The narrow variation seem to be a little rarer, at least outside my own collection. Here is one I spotted on Achim's site, a red-black with patent numbers



Once you notice the difference, the longer teeth are easy to spot. Anyone else have one?

Shorter base longer teeth

How were these made, exactly? Did they all come as a solid piece, and some machine grinds away the metal between the teeth?
Could a worn down cutting bit be responsible for a wider flat portion and shorter teeth?

amishmotorboat said:

How were these made, exactly? Did they all come as a solid piece, and some machine grinds away the metal between the teeth?
Could a worn down cutting bit be responsible for a wider flat portion and shorter teeth?

Click to expand...

it looks like longer teeth

alex2363 said:

it looks like longer teeth

Click to expand...

Yes, the teeth are longer on one than the other.
But I don't think there is any different in width from one side to the other if you hold them flat against each other, right?

edit: ok, I held mine together, because I happen to have two different ones as in the original post. It doesn't appear to be a 'tool wear' thing.
The cut area looks to start in almost the same place on each at the top of the plate, but one tapers in while the other is cut straight down.

amishmotorboat said:

Yes, the teeth are longer on one than the other.
But I don't think there is any different in width from one side to the other if you hold them flat against each other, right?

edit: ok, I held mine together, because I happen to have two different ones as in the original post. It doesn't appear to be a 'tool wear' thing.
The cut area looks to start in almost the same place on each at the top of the plate, but one tapers in while the other is cut straight down.

Click to expand...

just the inside base is shorter but overall they seem equal length. 15mm vs 17 mm inside the base

amishmotorboat said:

How were these made, exactly? Did they all come as a solid piece, and some machine grinds away the metal between the teeth?

Click to expand...

amishmotorboat said:

I happen to have two different ones as in the original post. It doesn't appear to be a 'tool wear' thing.
The cut area looks to start in almost the same place on each at the top of the plate, but one tapers in while the other is cut straight down.

Click to expand...

Glad to hear from someone else who has both variations. Of yours, is there any correlation with whether or not patents are stamped on the plate?

The cut area on mine sounds very like yours. The cuts for the wider variation are 90° to the plate, while the narrow variation has an angle. I see a bit of an angle in my NEW short-comb heads, too, but they still have the wider-looking under-plate. I think you have the right idea for production process, too. I think each plate was die-forged from stock as a solid piece and then machined to create the teeth. I suspect stamping was done later, either before or after plating - which means that stamping on a part is about the final assembly date, not the production date of the part. It has been a while since I have even pretended to do any machining, but I can imagine producing these two variations with different angles on a cutting wheel.

Granting all that speculation for a moment, were these variations done on purpose or were they mistakes? I think we need more data to say. Under the "on purpose" theory, Porter's post-merger wide variation could have been a leftover part from the first production run. But finding a pre-merger (no patents) example with the narrow variation would give a boost to the "poor QC" theory.

And I am still trying to decide if the narrow variation is really more aggressive or not.... More shaves needed.

Mine are stamped like yours. I do think that it's more likely that this is on purpose. I can imagine this being done (angling them like that) to allow lather and whiskers to flow through them more easily.

edit: I have not found a pre-patent one with the longer teeth, but have found a post-patent one with the shorter teeth.

Sorry to bump an old thread, but I wanted to add a mention of Gillette patent US1813471. I think it may be relevant to the 15mm variation. It dates from 1930 and the inventor, Ralph Thompson, appears on various NEW patents.


These rust-resisting blades would have been the "new process" and the Kroman, I think. The lacquer would protect the body of the blade from rust, but not the edge. The later Blue Blade was also protected by lacquer, according to Gillette v. Triangle Mech (1933).

This patent 1,813,471 does not seem to have appeared on any NEW or NEW Deluxe razors. But when I read it and looked at the diagrams I speculated that the 15mm plates might have been made with the same intent, to facilitate cleaning. The figure below shows something close to a New Improved, but as Thompson notes "the construction of the blade and holder in this respect is immaterial".

Thanks for posting this, Mike.

I had no idea this was mentioned in any Gillette patents, but I am convinced that is a superior design for an OC, and I have never even shaved with the Deluxe. Those deeply cut channels help to pull much of the detritus and soap scum under the comb and away from the blade's edge. The part about the blades makes more sense when one realizes that the razor is built around whatever blade template (whatever it is called) that they were working on at the time.