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Saturday SOTD Thread - November 30th, 2024 (#538)

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GEM Days 14a/14: Contour II a.k.a. Swan Song – Sat 30 Nov 2024

  • Brush: Zenith 506B MB (27 mm × 51 mm Manchurian badger)
  • Razor: GEM Contour II
  • Blade: Personna GEM PTFE
  • Lather: Declaration Grooming – Tribute
  • Post Shave: Saponificio Varesino - Settantesimo
  • Fragrance: Stirling Soap Co. – Executive Man

This is shave 27 of my run through all 14 generations of GEM-style razors, and I have reached the Contour II

The Contour II

Here, ASR dropped all pretense and gave up on any cleverness or quality. The plastic push-button mechanism was apparently too complicated to manufacture, so they dropped it. Back to the 1912 mechanism that was their initial fallback after the days of Micromatic glory. They didn’t change the base plate though so now it still has gaping slots for leaf springs that aren’t there anymore.

The original Countour top cap didn’t fit anymore, so they just went back to the top cap of the Featherweight. This top cap needs a thick leaf spring to hold in open or shut and it kind of fits, to they bolted that on too. Add a cheap handle to this heap of spare parts (I’m exaggerating a bit here) et voilà, you have a Frankenendling to conclude the GEM story line with a whimper.

Add poor QA on the plating for good measure. This NOS razor never left its original clam shell packaging before taking these pictures, and it has plating loss and verdigris around the hinge and where the safety bar is joined to the base plate, for instance, while early ASR razors have legendary thick plating often going strong after100 years in dirty storage.

The shave

Nice, and uneventful shave with the mild Contour II, tribute and a a few summery dupes.

The timeline

  1. 1906-1953: GEM 1912/Star Cadet/Junior/Damaskeene
  2. 1914-1927: 1914
  3. 1924-1933: 1924 Shovelhead
  4. 1930-1932: Micromatic Open Comb Gen 1 (Bumpless baseplate)
  5. 1932-1941: Micromatic Open Comb Gen 2 (double-edge Micromatic GEM blades)
  6. 1940-1943: Micromatic Clog-Pruf
  7. 1945-1946: Micromatic Clog-Pruf Peerless
  8. 1947-1950: Micromatic Flying Wing/Bullet Tip, with guiding eye until 1948, with plastic knob in the last year
  9. 1949-1953: GEM Jewel/Streamline/Ambassador (The beginning of the end IMHO)
  10. 1950: New GEM Feather Weight, renamed to “Slim-V Flat Top” in 1953, British version sold as “Natural Angle” by Ever-Ready
  11. 1955-1958: GEM V-Slim “Heavy Flat Top” (G-Bar, shiny chrome), New V Natural Angle Heavy Flat Top (E-Bar, less shiny nickel)
  12. 1958-1965: Push Button
  13. 1965-1973: Contour
  14. 1973-1979: Contour II (The last GEM razor) ← We are here
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