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I have a KANNER BLUE STEEL razor, and I didn't know if anyone could tell me anything about it or about KANNER in general. Like age or years made .... that sort of stuff?
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Can't tell you anything about the razor, but I remember the name 'Kanner' coming up in a thread about a strop with two handles and a roller mechanism coming up some years ago, so I did a search for Kanner Strops and I think it is the same man. Can't find out much about his early life, and what there is turns out to be confusing as there are an awful lot of Kanners about, and a lot of his contemporaries were also called Samuel. Most of them seem to have been immigrants of jewish extractio from Poland/Riga/Russia that settled in New York City, where our man comes to notice around 1912 as patenting a stropping machine - for a straight razor! Here it is:
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Notice the bit in the middle that grips the razor. The razor slides back and forth while the strop handles are pulled up and down. It was on sale by 1915 and Sam Kanner was soliciting for agents to sell it:
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He invented another one in 1918 - the Sterling Stropper and other stropping machines for DE razors followed:
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It seems that in the late 1920s or early 1930s he became associated with a company called the Society Club Hats Corporation, associated with Jones-Anderson Clothing Co. He passed away in September 1947:
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and the Society Hats Corporation passed on to a firm called Urqhart.
I suppose that your razor must have been made at the time he was involved with the straight-razor stropping machines, and there are records of a german firm (can't find the name) who exported razors to him, so he didn't make razors himself.
Regards,
Neil
Hi, I'm not new here, but I haven't posted much. I suppose I lurk more than anything. My father came across something in an auction lot recently and I thought it might be an interesting addition to this thread, old as it may be. He found a razor stropping machine almost exactly like the one you have pictured here. But the patent date is July 11, 1911. After a little searching around a found a patent number 997575 and drawings of the the unit from the inventor as well as a detailed description of how it works and how it is to be used. Who knows who was actually first with this idea, but honestly, it seems like it would work really well.
Has anyone ever used one of these machines? Do they work? Did F. Mitchell come up with this devise before Mr. Kanner did?
