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Saturday SOTD Thread - November 30th, 2024 (#538)
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this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2024
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GEM Days 14a/14: Contour II a.k.a. Swan Song – Sat 30 Nov 2024
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