Rockwell model T

YES.

There will NEVER be a razor made like a gillette adjustable again. Ever.

The process gillette used is called progressive stamping. Meaning sheets of brass were fed into long lines of machines that would progressively stamp the Parts.

By progressive I mean - if you want to make a curved silo door with two little legs and hinge holes in either side- you may have 8 dies / stamping procedures to do that. Each die today would cost something like $30,000.

So you can imagine the tooling alone for a fatboy May Be $1,000,000. Then you need all the material. Then you need to find a shop that has dozens of stamping machines and will set up a production run for you. You will blow through a few hundred parts just dialing it in. When you turn on the run, you better hope you have a quantity of 10,000 at least because below that quantity your tooling costs are too much of a barrier to entry.

The big advantage of progressive stamping is that the Parts are formed, not cast. Meaning they are stronger and more durable. They can be bent and bent back - not so with cast Parts. Try dropping your zamak razor part and watch it shatter like frozen ice. Drop a gillette stamped part and you can bend it back.

They are also 100% interchangeable. I can take a gillette part from 1957 and swap it with a part from 1962. That may sound like no big deal - try doing that with a Milled part from some boutique razor maker today. Chances are the parts can be slightly different. Not so with stamping - they are exact clones.

Metal injection molding today is one of the better technologies - feather and ikon use it and it’s great for getting complex shapes like guards done in stainless at a low per unit price. But again it’s just a fancy version of casting and the parts don’t have a metal grain to them and thus are still susceptible to cracking if too much stress is exerted.

This is one reason I love gillette razors - because the demand for DE was so big in the mid 1950’s - progressive stamping not only was the best technology it was also the only technology that could keep up with hundreds of thousands if not millions of razor handles needed. And because the most expensive thing is the set up and tooling, it made it possible for fatboys to cost $1.95 - today equivalent to $17.

This is some amazing knowledge sharing and perhaps a rare insight on how Gillette made its razors. Like today, back in the day when Gillette like today was towering over  other competitors and  had the money power to spend so much on R&D and also have enough sales to make a huge profits in the investmwnt.
My respect for Matt's knowledge as an authority on stuff wet shaving  has grown tremendously !
Also I am impressed to see Matt coming in to a thread of a competition product which is really struggling and taking a stand to answer questions on why it is indeed such a hard task to make a Gillette clone . Instead of just keeping quiet which he could have and let the credibility of Rockwell tumble down still in this thread and perhaps made many in this thread lean towards his product - he chose to come in as a true professional who has experience of making a complex razor and having his Share of upsets and improvements.

I really am all  respect for Matt being a fine gentleman and a true professional. I will be glad to have bought the Rex ambassador which is his craftsmanship z knowing he took a stand which he could have avoided completely.

Some industrial espionage is in order for Rockwell here, they should take hold of a Parthenon and take it apart. LOL

I am skeptical about qshave taking the money before making the razor. They are in the business too long and have made pretty good clones of a complex tool like the futur. Parker has made the variant a clone of the progress and RE has made the  Rex Ambassador without taking any money.

I think they just jumped on to the Kickstarter to take the money even if they wouldn't have the need for it as they would have seen that Kickstarter razor campaigns get many wet shavers excited to commit money and hence add more volume to the numbers before the razor is even made. I think they're disappointed to see that the Merkur futur clone did not set the market the fire even at that price point hence using a Kickstarter would perhaps gather much more momentum at a higher price point.

Chinese manufactures have seen the wet Shaving market potential for high margin products and are no longer content to merely be low price OEM suppliers to USA and European vendors who brand and mark up their products with a large margin..I think players like Yaqi and qshave want to step up their game and cut out their OEM low price low profit model and market their brand at almost equal price points as the established competition.

Just my two cents...

Thank you for the kind words. I have met Garreth of Rockwell and he’s a really nice guy. I would never wish a company in our industry Ill will - first it’s bad karma and second we are all here to serve the customer. There’s more than enough customers who want more than enough razors for many companies to thrive.

I will say that competition is the way the market will decide who wins and who looses. Competition is why many new companies are trying to get into the wet shaving game. The hope is that ultimately the consumer wins because this competition will drove the best products up and the bad ones won’t survive.

I would like to also note - from my observations of Parker and weshi TTO razors - rather than progressive stamping their parts, they instead cast their parts. It’s one reason why (I think) Rockwell switched the components from all stainless to brass zamak and stainless. And from their updates it seems that they are indeed casting these complex parts like the T bar and doors. This casting certainly makes the Parts cheap to produce on a per unit price, but if your mold is bad then you have an expensive problem to fix.

Another reason why gillette is king of the tto - look at a gillette T bar. Then look really closely. It’s a stamped part that is folded over on itself to make a mirror image from one side to the next. This is beyond a tall order - in fact I’ve shown it to stamping companies today and everyone who sees it just is awestruck. If it’s not folded perfectly then you will get un even blade gap.

The fact that I can swap T bars on two different razors made years apart and they are completely interchangeable is incredible. That means the stamping die held tolerances for millions of impressions. Hence the high initial investment but ultimate superiority over CNC or casting.

Thx

Matt




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All hail Matt !!!!!


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Interesting. On my Facebook feed. Why?

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Because it's back up for sale for $99?

"Estimated ship-date: August 2018.

Pre-order pricing extended! Reserve your Rockwell Model T today at the lowest possible price of $99. Effective May 31st, the price of The Model T will be increased to $195."

They might be looking to break even on this one and just get the hell outta dodge. At this point I don't blame them.

Wow.now I want to open up my gillette adjustable to have a peek inside.

However a question I have out of curiosity - I have a few slims and black beauties and a fatboy. Why are most available from eBay have uneven blade exposure and are more aggressive on one side ?

How does one go about fixing such a razor ? Is disassembly and reassembly an option to fix it ?

Sorry it's an off topic question - but would be interested to know.

YES.

There will NEVER be a razor made like a gillette adjustable again. Ever.

The process gillette used is called progressive stamping. Meaning sheets of brass were fed into long lines of machines that would progressively stamp the Parts.

By progressive I mean - if you want to make a curved silo door with two little legs and hinge holes in either side- you may have 8 dies / stamping procedures to do that. Each die today would cost something like $30,000.

So you can imagine the tooling alone for a fatboy May Be $1,000,000. Then you need all the material. Then you need to find a shop that has dozens of stamping machines and will set up a production run for you. You will blow through a few hundred parts just dialing it in. When you turn on the run, you better hope you have a quantity of 10,000 at least because below that quantity your tooling costs are too much of a barrier to entry.

The big advantage of progressive stamping is that the Parts are formed, not cast. Meaning they are stronger and more durable. They can be bent and bent back - not so with cast Parts. Try dropping your zamak razor part and watch it shatter like frozen ice. Drop a gillette stamped part and you can bend it back.

They are also 100% interchangeable. I can take a gillette part from 1957 and swap it with a part from 1962. That may sound like no big deal - try doing that with a Milled part from some boutique razor maker today. Chances are the parts can be slightly different. Not so with stamping - they are exact clones.

Metal injection molding today is one of the better technologies - feather and ikon use it and it’s great for getting complex shapes like guards done in stainless at a low per unit price. But again it’s just a fancy version of casting and the parts don’t have a metal grain to them and thus are still susceptible to cracking if too much stress is exerted.

This is one reason I love gillette razors - because the demand for DE was so big in the mid 1950’s - progressive stamping not only was the best technology it was also the only technology that could keep up with hundreds of thousands if not millions of razor handles needed. And because the most expensive thing is the set up and tooling, it made it possible for fatboys to cost $1.95 - today equivalent to $17.

This is some amazing knowledge sharing and perhaps a rare insight on how Gillette made its razors. Like today, back in the day when Gillette like today was towering over  other competitors and  had the money power to spend so much on R&D and also have enough sales to make a huge profits in the investmwnt.
My respect for Matt's knowledge as an authority on stuff wet shaving  has grown tremendously !
Also I am impressed to see Matt coming in to a thread of a competition product which is really struggling and taking a stand to answer questions on why it is indeed such a hard task to make a Gillette clone . Instead of just keeping quiet which he could have and let the credibility of Rockwell tumble down still in this thread and perhaps made many in this thread lean towards his product - he chose to come in as a true professional who has experience of making a complex razor and having his Share of upsets and improvements.

I really am all  respect for Matt being a fine gentleman and a true professional. I will be glad to have bought the Rex ambassador which is his craftsmanship z knowing he took a stand which he could have avoided completely.

Some industrial espionage is in order for Rockwell here, they should take hold of a Parthenon and take it apart. LOL

I am skeptical about qshave taking the money before making the razor. They are in the business too long and have made pretty good clones of a complex tool like the futur. Parker has made the variant a clone of the progress and RE has made the  Rex Ambassador without taking any money.

I think they just jumped on to the Kickstarter to take the money even if they wouldn't have the need for it as they would have seen that Kickstarter razor campaigns get many wet shavers excited to commit money and hence add more volume to the numbers before the razor is even made. I think they're disappointed to see that the Merkur futur clone did not set the market the fire even at that price point hence using a Kickstarter would perhaps gather much more momentum at a higher price point.

Chinese manufactures have seen the wet Shaving market potential for high margin products and are no longer content to merely be low price OEM suppliers to USA and European vendors who brand and mark up their products with a large margin..I think players like Yaqi and qshave want to step up their game and cut out their OEM low price low profit model and market their brand at almost equal price points as the established competition.

Just my two cents...

Thank you for the kind words. I have met Garreth of Rockwell and he’s a really nice guy. I would never wish a company in our industry Ill will - first it’s bad karma and second we are all here to serve the customer. There’s more than enough customers who want more than enough razors for many companies to thrive.

I will say that competition is the way the market will decide who wins and who looses. Competition is why many new companies are trying to get into the wet shaving game. The hope is that ultimately the consumer wins because this competition will drove the best products up and the bad ones won’t survive.

I would like to also note - from my observations of Parker and weshi TTO razors - rather than progressive stamping their parts, they instead cast their parts. It’s one reason why (I think) Rockwell switched the components from all stainless to brass zamak and stainless. And from their updates it seems that they are indeed casting these complex parts like the T bar and doors. This casting certainly makes the Parts cheap to produce on a per unit price, but if your mold is bad then you have an expensive problem to fix.

Another reason why gillette is king of the tto - look at a gillette T bar. Then look really closely. It’s a stamped part that is folded over on itself to make a mirror image from one side to the next. This is beyond a tall order - in fact I’ve shown it to stamping companies today and everyone who sees it just is awestruck. If it’s not folded perfectly then you will get un even blade gap.

The fact that I can swap T bars on two different razors made years apart and they are completely interchangeable is incredible. That means the stamping die held tolerances for millions of impressions. Hence the high initial investment but ultimate superiority over CNC or casting.

Thx

Matt




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Good GAWD I really hope this works out for them.  The 6S and Rockwell in general have been great as far as the razor and trying to make things right.

I still feel this way. I REALLY hope they get this whole thing worked out, but it doesn't look good right now.

I scored one last week on Reddit’s Shave Bazaar and it will arrive in about 8 days. Looking forward to trying it out and comparing to the Rex once mine ships after the group buy is over.

I scored one last week on Reddit’s Shave Bazaar and it will arrive in about 8 days. Looking forward to trying it out and comparing to the Rex once mine ships after the group buy is over.

Congrats and looking forward to your thoughts on it....

Some industrial espionage is in order for Rockwell here, they should take hold of a Parthenon and take it apart. LOL

Less of a comparison than you’d think. The Model T is pretty much a modern version of the Gillette Adjustable design. On the FAQ page for the Parthenon, however, they discuss the difficulties of producing such a razor and why they went a different way.


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Well, I'm backer number 264, and I haven't heard anything yet. Really thinking about pulling my backing from them at this point, if I can find out how... *searches through kickstarter*

Well, I'm backer number 264, and I haven't heard anything yet. Really thinking about pulling my backing from them at this point, if I can find out how... *searches through kickstarter*

In their new release statement they spoke about all orders being filled by the end of August. There was a problem with one of the parts which they need to replace. I know how you feel when something is taking over 2 years I also was thinking about asking for my money back which they will do but after waiting this long what's another few months

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