Tuckaway date?

Hi All!
Just bought a Gillette Tuckaway on the bay but not sure what date it is?
The serial number on the bottom plate is : 066391Y
It says around the bottom of the handle: PAT. 133963-1917
Anyone any idea of its age please?
How does it shave compared to the New?
Here's some pics:

It looks the bees knees on my UFO Tornado! I'm going to try it tomorrow!

1921 Tuckaway, the Y letter indicates it was Made In England. Here is a date code from Waits.

alex2363 said:

1921 Tuckaway, the Y letter indicates it was Made In England. Here is a date code from Waits.

View attachment 361137

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So in the bottom picture, their where 863,912 made 1921 and 472,764 made in 1922 etc?
But what are the "A's" and "B's" after the serial numbers at the bottom?

Cornishman said:

So in the bottom picture, their where 863,912 made 1921 and 472,764 made in 1922 etc?
But what are the "A's" and "B's" after the serial numbers at the bottom?

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Sorry, I cut off the first part. Here is the whole section with the appropriate information. [ A,B,C etc, mean they are Boston made razors]

alex2363 said:

Sorry, I cut off the first part. Here is the whole section with the appropriate information. [ A,B,C etc, mean they are Boston made razors]

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That's great! Thanks!
It's nice to know I have an early one!
1921....It must be the oldest razor in my small but ever growing collection.
Hope it gives a good shave! I will find out tomorrow!

You can't cross over the British numbers against the American series dates like that. The American plant's production is the only one we have lined up against dates; as far as I know we're not even sure where the other countries' series stop to know how many were made in total.

Your serial number is still fairly low there, Cornishman, but the knob has the later style "reverse diamond" pattern knurling. I'd be comfortable guessing that it's still fairly early in the New Improved range, but I doubt it could possibly be any earlier than the very end of 1921, and more likely later than that.

MacDaddy said:

You can't cross over the British numbers against the American series dates like that. The American plant's production is the only one we have lined up against dates; as far as I know we're not even sure where the other countries' series stop to know how many were made in total.

Your serial number is still fairly low there, Cornishman, but the knob has the later style "reverse diamond" pattern knurling. I'd be comfortable guessing that it's still fairly early in the New Improved range, but I doubt it could possibly be any earlier than the very end of 1921, and more likely later than that.

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The Y dates are English not American, what do you mean crossed? It is a early date razor by the numbers on it, but how could they be crossed if it clearly states that the Y means its a English made razor not American.

MacDaddy said:

You can't cross over the British numbers against the American series dates like that. The American plant's production is the only one we have lined up against dates; as far as I know we're not even sure where the other countries' series stop to know how many were made in total.

Your serial number is still fairly low there, Cornishman, but the knob has the later style "reverse diamond" pattern knurling. I'd be comfortable guessing that it's still fairly early in the New Improved range, but I doubt it could possibly be any earlier than the very end of 1921, and more likely later than that.

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What do you mean? Wouldn't you know what total of razors were made either documenting them as people buy them, in this case Cornisman has an early one. I am sure a few other buyers may have a later numbered one and we can estimate how many were made by that one.......by the way, shouldnt the numbers start with number 1 followed by the letter, Cornishman razor starts with 0 and ends Y.

alex2363 said:

The Y dates are English not American, what do you mean crossed? It is a early date razor by the numbers on it, but how could they be crossed if it clearly states that the Y means its a English made razor not American.

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I mean you can't take the number from a British razor and look it up on the American series and say it's a 1921 serial number. We don't know how many New Improved razors were made in England over their full run to even really have much of a guess exactly how early that number might be. That is, our guess for where to place Cornishman's number would be very different if we knew that the series ended at 300,000 vs. 600,000 vs. 900,000.

Judging from the knob design, though, we can guess that it's not one of the very earliest, which should have the same diamond pattern on the knob as is on the handle, like this one:

MacDaddy said:

I mean you can't take the number from a British razor and look it up on the American series and say it's a 1921 serial number. We don't know how many New Improved razors were made in England over their full run to even really have much of a guess exactly how early that number might be. That is, our guess for where to place Cornishman's number would be very different if we knew that the series ended at 300,000 vs. 600,000 vs. 900,000.

Judging from the knob design, though, we can guess that it's not one of the very earliest, which should have the same diamond pattern on the knob as is on the handle, like this one:

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So the Waits reference guide is some what incorrect and should not be followed, or atleast for this particular issue which is the foreign country dating feature.

alex2363 said:

Wouldn't you know what total of razors were made either documenting them as people buy them, in this case Cornisman has an early one. I am sure a few other buyers may have a later numbered one and we can estimate how many were made by that one.

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That would tell you that there were at least X number made, and it's probably the closest we can come to anything at this point. I don't know if anyone's tried to pull anything together on that before, though. I'll have a look back through the archives and I'll either link to what I find or start a new thread for it.

alex2363 said:

by the way, shouldnt the numbers start with number 1 followed by the letter, Cornishman razor starts with 0 and ends Y.

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I'm not sure I follow you. Why would it start with a 1? The indicator for "Made in England" is a six-digit serial number followed by a "Y." The British and Canadian plants seem to have usually filled leading places in lower numbers with zeroes where the American plant left gaps. So seeing "066391Y" on this razor where the American equivalent would have been " 66391A" is pretty much expected.

MacDaddy said:

I mean you can't take the number from a British razor and look it up on the American series and say it's a 1921 serial number. We don't know how many New Improved razors were made in England over their full run to even really have much of a guess exactly how early that number might be. That is, our guess for where to place Cornishman's number would be very different if we knew that the series ended at 300,000 vs. 600,000 vs. 900,000.

Judging from the knob design, though, we can guess that it's not one of the very earliest, which should have the same diamond pattern on the knob as is on the handle, like this one:

Click to expand...

Do you have the knob differences on pics, because i see two designs by later models by i am not sure about something.

alex2363 said:

So the Waits reference guide is some what incorrect and should not be followed, or atleast for this particular issue which is the foreign country dating feature.

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No, there's nothing there in the material from Waits that lines the British numbers up against dates. It just says that the "Y" suffix was used for razors made in England. The table of dates that you referenced only applies to the American series.

MacDaddy said:

That would tell you that there were at least X number made, and it's probably the closest we can come to anything at this point. I don't know if anyone's tried to pull anything together on that before, though. I'll have a look back through the archives and I'll either link to what I find or start a new thread for it.

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That would be a very ingenious thing to do, it would help everyone since many of these other resources are not reliable, especially Waits and Krumholtz [ the 2 foremost authority figures in Traditional wet shaving].

MacDaddy said:

I'm not sure I follow you. Why would it start with a 1? The indicator for "Made in England" is a six-digit serial number followed by a "Y." The British and Canadian plants seem to have usually filled leading places in lower numbers with zeroes where the American plant left gaps. So seeing "066391Y" on this razor where the American equivalent would have been " 66391A" is pretty much expected.

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So the positional parameter is not a factor with American date chart, they just left it blank which can be misleading [ such as in this case] . The English date chart can be confusing since American Gillette did not use O in 1921 date chart. England razor date system sure was chaotic and in a way very counter productive. Why did they even use it.

MacDaddy said:

No, there's nothing there in the material from Waits that lines the British numbers up against dates. It just says that the "Y" suffix was used for razors made in England. The table of dates that you referenced only applies to the American series.

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So why not get this issue resolved, lets get a consensus on this English date system, [similar to the Canadian chart.] and start a English date chart with all the information or theories and do a wiki. This would help members substantially since all our other supposedly reliable sources are not reliable.

I am willing to help out with any theories or anything. Lets just do something about this......

alex2363 said:

So the positional parameter is not a factor with American date chart, they just left it blank which can be misleading [ such as in this case] . The English date chart can be confusing since American Gillette did not use O in 1921 date chart. England razor date system sure was chaotic and in a way very counter productive. Why did they even use it.

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There's not really anything chaotic about it. It's a zero, not a letter "O." Think of it like an odometer that might say "001234" instead of "1234" when the car's driven 1,234 miles.

alex2363 said:

So why not get this issue resolved, lets get a consensus on this English date system, [similar to the Canadian chart.] and start a English date chart with all the information or theories and do a wiki. This would help members substantially since all our other supposedly reliable sources are not reliable.

Click to expand...

In this particular case its not that they're unreliable, they just aren't saying what you appear to be reading into them. They just don't have any information beyond the letter suffix used in the different countries.

I couldn't find anything further searching back through the archives, so I started a new thread here.

Thanks for the chart thing Alex, dated my USA Tuckaway to 1925

MacDaddy said:

There's not really anything chaotic about it. It's a zero, not a letter "O." Think of it like an odometer that might say "001234" instead of "1234" when the car's driven 1,234 miles.

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Well, I mean chaotic or unorganized in general. Such as adding a non used number [o] on a razor where as the American razors dont add the the number [o] due to fact that it does not use such a number on such razor model series. [ talk about disorganization ] .

MacDaddy said:

In this particular case its not that they're unreliable, they just aren't saying what you appear to be reading into them. They just don't have any information beyond the letter suffix used in the different countries.

I couldn't find anything further searching back through the archives, so I started a new thread here.

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It seems that they do have much of the facts and figures correct to some extent, but when it matters the data is always unreliable. I would have most likely never figure this out until you brought it up a few years ago. I remember when you pointed out all the errors and i was stunned that such errors were there. I knew that the system was disorganized from Gillette and having these outside sources with varied and incorrect facts made it worse.
I am glad that you and many other members figured this out. Now we may have a chance to rectify this by using our deductive reasoning and investigative powers to gear our members in the right direction. I think that starting a thread like yours would be a step in the right direction. I am here if you need my 2 cents. http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showth...-serial-numbers-from-Gillette-s-non-US-plants

ironfist said:

Thanks for the chart thing Alex, dated my USA Tuckaway to 1925

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Your welcome, it is a chart from Waits compendium.

alex2363 said:

Well, I mean chaotic or unorganized in general. Such as adding a non used number [o] on a razor where as the American razors dont add the the number [o] due to fact that it does not use such a number on such razor model series. [ talk about disorganization ]

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It's probably just that the punches they used to stamp the serial number were 6 digit but didn't have a blank space. Each of the 6 slots probably had 0-9 so the only way to stamp is to start at 000001. This is not chaotic or unorganized at all.

For a company during that time to serialize something as small and common as a daily shaver the way they did, where 100 years later you can find one of these in a drawer somewhere and be able to go online and look exactly where and when it was manufactured is simply incredible.