Schick: Wrenches, Razors, Facts, & Fiction

[Private Lugnutz]

Schick aluminum pipe wrenches pop up here on GJ from time to time, often accompanied by the claim, googled out of the uncorroborated, unchallenged fanciful ether of internet guesswork, that they were made by the razor company during WWII.

Neither part of that myth is true.

The name of the company that sold the injector razors invented by Jacob Schick wasn’t Schick, it was the Magazine Repeating Razor Company. Jacob Schick was a Colonel during WWI. He devised the razors on the same principle as the magazines in repeating rifles, but sold his interest in the Magazine Repeating Razor Company to his manufacturer, American Chain and Cable, in 1928, long before WWII. He used the capital to form his own company, Schick Dry Shaver, Inc., in Stamford, Conn., making his next invention, the electric razor.

Good quick-read summaries can be found here (Compendium of Safety Razors) and here (The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History), and in the context of Pics 1, 2, & 3 below.

While it’s true that steel was restricted during WWII, so was aluminum, just as precious to aircraft production as chrome, nickel, molybdenum and vanadium for tanks. Neither the Magazine Repeating Razor Company or Schick Dry Shaver, Inc. made pipe wrenches, of any composition, for the government or anyone else during WWII.

But they did sell a boatload of razors, razor blades, and electric shavers, and, in Schick’s case, navigation instruments! (See Pics 4 & 5)

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Schick pipe wrenches were made by a company named Schick Products, Inc. in Belmont, CA, named after its founder Herbert M. Schick. No relation to Jacob.

Coincidentally, Herbert was also a military man, and he also parlayed his experience into his business. He was a Lieutenant and a pilot in the Air Corps during WWI. In 1919, he returned to Stanford University (see Pic 1) and was issued the 360th civilian pilot’s license the US issued in the still nascent aviation industry (see Pic 2). In 1926, he became the General Manager of Universal Steel Products (see Pic 3). In 1928, he was the President of his own company, Schick Products Inc (see Pic 4). In 1936, through 1952, he was a member of a board of advisors to the federal government on steel cabinets, desk, and lockers for offices (see Pic 5). I have no record of H.M. Schick supplying office furniture or tools to the government during WWII.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

In 1967, his company trademarked the name Schick specifically for pipe wrenches (see Pic 1). They stated first use as 1953, but I can’t find a record of them making aluminum pipe wrenches earlier than 1958, when they blitz advertised them in every popular trade mag (see Pic 2). Schick Products had a CAGE code in the federal register as late as 1983.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

This is the first time I have ever posted any research like this little without owning an example of my own, but I am happy to present excellent examples of what I believe is an early and a later pipe wrench owned by d42jeep (see Pics 1 & 2) and Mintrgun, with beryllium-copper jaw inserts (see Pics 3, 4, & 5). There are several other pipe wrenches on GJ scattered on various threads, but they were either whatzits or vague titles. Maybe this one can be a central repository and help someone with a future search. Note that there are even rarer Schick wrenches out there, including a DBE wrench and an "alligator" wrench, both also aluminum.

 

[Mintgrun]

Thank you for the write-up, Lugz. Coincidentally, I happen to own a Schick razor as well as that wrench.

A friend of mine found these in a cottage he bought and gave them to me. I've used some blades up in the shop, but have not attempted to use the razor; which looks to have been rode hard and put away wet. The cartridge quality is impressive and the blades make a utility knife blade seem dull. It's a far cry from the disposable mentality of today and the twenty-year guarantee attests to that.

Tom

 

[RTM]

Interesting, we had a Herbert Alton Schuck, 88 y.o., living and working in Belmont. Woody!!, time for some ancestry work.

yup, he was the son.

Herbert Schick Obituary (1933 - 2019) - San Mateo, CA - San Francisco Chronicle

View Herbert Schick's obituary, send flowers and sign the guestbook.

www.legacy.com

 

[Oregon rock crusher]

Good reasearch as always Lugz. Really like that early example of Dons and Mintgruns beryllium jaws. It's motivated me to go out and clean up this 24" Schick pipe wrench which I've had around since the mid to late 70's. It survived time in a truck shop and in a service rig doing duty following a portable crusher around and it shows in the many dings. The original dovetailed jaws are just hardened steel on mine retained with a roll pin. It was nearly black with years of oily dust accumulation but cleaned up pretty well after a night soaking in hot Dawn water. Ed.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Thank you for the write-up, Lugz. Coincidentally, I happen to own a Schick razor as well as that wrench.

That's great! I would intentionally display them together just begging for the inquisitive questions from guests and call it the Schick Schtick (go ahead, say that 10 x fast...) corner of the Lugzsonian.

yup, he was the son.

I'm not sure when he took over the business. Pop was a stud, but I do wonder if he was still presiding over the company in 1958 when they introduced the aluminum wrenches. He graduated from Stanford in 1920, so he would've been about 58 at the time. I found a bunch of HELP WANTED ads in 1960, when sales must have really been picking up. I didn't bother saving them, but they were looking for "top flight" men only experienced in mechanical and hydraulic presses, QC/layout checking for plaster casts and dies, and routing, grinding, and cutoff operators, but all had to have familiarity with aluminum. HELP WANTED tapered off very quickly with only spotty ads in the mid 60's and none after 1971.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Speaking of Herbert M. Schick, this guy is GJ hero material through and through.

At a 1956 Councours D'Elegance with his prize-winning 1898 de Dion Bouton, he was waxing eloquent about his lifelong passion for cars, which started, he said, in 1914, when he built what he described in his own words as a "hot rod" out of a 1910 Chalmers taxi chassis that someone had junked. See Pic 1.

Schick Products, Inc. was definitely active during the war on Tehama Street in SF. Their contracts (apparently for steel furniture and nondescript "aircraft forgings") were probably smaller than $50,000 each, which is the cutoff for the 1945 WPB Major War Supply Contracts books I have. See HELP WANTED ads in Pic 2.

In 1953 they were in the process of moving to their new facility in Belmont.

Herbert survived his daughter (1975) and wife (1979), but believe it or not, I still can't find an obit for him. Dude left Stanford University to join the Air Corps as a pilot in WWI. Goes back to Stanford from Wright Field. After graduating in 1920 rises to GM at Universal Steel by 1926. Starts his own company. Bread and butter work through the 30's and WWII. Ends his career making unique well-regarded and still popular aluminum pipe wrenches. He was a titan of the industry, at least regionally. His wife gets a 4 inch obit in the Examiner. There has to be one.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Nice survivor, Ed!

 

[four.cycle]

His wife gets a 4 inch obit in the Examiner. There has to be one.

Any possibility he may have moved to a different city in his last days?
That could possibly result in any obituary column to be printed in a different paper.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

I searched all of California and then with no location (nationally).

 

[four.cycle]

Well.... there are people for whom no obituary columns are printed in local papers - I can think of one recently departed right off the top of my head - but a big industry muckity-muck like you've described would surely have been noticed by some reporter somewhere.
That is odd.

 

[d42jeep]

Thanks, Lugz, for starting this thread. Here are some additional views of my early example. The last two shots demonstrate that there is no provision for tensioning the moveable jaw unlike the later example. There is quite a bit of movement of the jaw within the handle.
-Don

 

[Gschick]

Schick aluminum pipe wrenches pop up here on GJ from time to time, often accompanied by the claim, googled out of the uncorroborated, unchallenged fanciful ether of internet guesswork, that they were made by the razor company during WWII.

Neither part of that myth is true.

The name of the company that sold the injector razors invented by Jacob Schick wasn’t Schick, it was the Magazine Repeating Razor Company. Jacob Schick was a Colonel during WWI. He devised the razors on the same principle as the magazines in repeating rifles, but sold his interest in the Magazine Repeating Razor Company to his manufacturer, American Chain and Cable, in 1928, long before WWII. He used the capital to form his own company, Schick Dry Shaver, Inc., in Stamford, Conn., making his next invention, the electric razor.

Good quick-read summaries can be found here (Compendium of Safety Razors) and here (The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History), and in the context of Pics 1, 2, & 3 below.

While it’s true that steel was restricted during WWII, so was aluminum, just as precious to aircraft production as chrome, nickel, molybdenum and vanadium for tanks. Neither the Magazine Repeating Razor Company or Schick Dry Shaver, Inc. made pipe wrenches, of any composition, for the government or anyone else during WWII.

But they did sell a boatload of razors, razor blades, and electric shavers, and, in Schick’s case, navigation instruments! (See Pics 4 & 5)

Thank you for the great info. Herb Schick was my grandfather and was quite a man. He not only made the wrenches (I still have about ten including a couple of 48 inch wrenches l) he made aircraftbparts as well as the forging a for the lunar rover. His break came during the building of the Alaska pipeline. Due to the sub zero temps the steel wrenches kept snapping. They found my grand father and tested the aluminum wrench and found it could survive the cold temps. He shipped out wrenches by traim train load for the pipeline. A while back I found a bucket of jaw inserts (I learned to run the broaching machine when I was 12). If I can find it I will pass it on.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Herb Schick was my grandfather and was quite a man.

He sure as heck was! From pilot in WWI to industry to starting his own company - they just don't make them like that anymore.

Thanks for posting. It's becoming quite an honored tradition for Garage Journal to attract grandsons! We have posts here from the grandson of the man who started and ran JO Tools in Southgate, CA., and the grandson of William H. Ferguson, of Trimo-Ferguson and Porter-Ferguson auto body tool fame. So you're in very good company.

He not only made the wrenches (I still have about ten including a couple of 48 inch wrenches l) he made aircraftbparts as well as the forging a for the lunar rover. His break came during the building of the Alaska pipeline. Due to the sub zero temps the steel wrenches kept snapping. They found my grand father and tested the aluminum wrench and found it could survive the cold temps. He shipped out wrenches by traim train load for the pipeline.

This is the kind of information you just can't "google"! Thanks so much for adding it to our collective knowledge base.

A while back I found a bucket of jaw inserts (I learned to run the broaching machine when I was 12). If I can find it I will pass it on.

I am sure that would make A LOT of collectors happy! I am a bit of curmudgeon about shopping online (it's all about the hunt for me!) and have yet to be so lucky to find a Schick pipe wrench "in the wild" (estate sales, flea markets, etc) as we say.

 

[slowtwitch73]

Awesome^^^

 

[d42jeep]

Schick pipe wrenches were made by a company named Schick Products, Inc. in Belmont, CA, named after its founder Herbert M. Schick. No relation to Jacob.

Coincidentally, Herbert was also a military man, and he also parlayed his experience into his business. He was a Lieutenant and a pilot in the Air Corps during WWI. In 1919, he returned to Stanford University (see Pic 1) and was issued the 360th civilian pilot’s license the US issued in the still nascent aviation industry (see Pic 2). In 1926, he became the General Manager of Universal Steel Products (for WWII buffs, the same company who made the FSN auto wrenches we like to collect)(see Pic 3). In 1928, he was the President of his own company, Schick Products Inc (see Pic 4). In 1936, through 1952, he was a member of a board of advisors to the federal government on steel cabinets, desk, and lockers for offices (see Pic 5). I have no record of H.M. Schick supplying office furniture or tools to the government during WWII.

I would never have guessed that there was a relationship between my FSN marked Universal Metal Products 15” auto wrench and my Schlick aluminum pipe wrench. We found the auto wrench at a Tahoe Thrift shop and the pipe wrench in the Bay Area. Lugz, am I confusing Universal Metal Products of LA with Universal Steel Products of SF?
-Don

 

[wrenchguy]

18" pipe wrench with some Powr-Kraft aluminum stickers on it. Other side not marked.

 

[KnurledNut]

Note that there are even rarer Schick wrenches out there, including a DBE wrench and an "alligator" wrench, both also aluminum.

They also made adjustable wrenches.

 

[MisterEd]

Note that there are even rarer Schick wrenches out there, including a DBE wrench and an "alligator" wrench, both also aluminum.

While doing the perpetual-fail job of sorting through forgotten acquisitions I found this Shick Adjustable, a non-sparking variety. It's well made, and slightly heavier at 220 grams than a Diamond and J.P. Danielson I had at hand to compare.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Very nice!

 

[Fred Knox]

Just picked up this 12" Schick Adjustable Wrench. It weighs 1 lb. 7 oz., which is about the same as the comparable sized JP Danielson (1 lb. 9 oz.) and Barcalo Buffalo (1 lb. 6 oz.) models. It looks like bronze (certainly non-sparking), but one of you may know differently. It works super smoothly.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

It's kind of hard to see the markings, but it appears to have the same 11-digit Federal Stock Number (5120-293-0031) as the example that @MisterEd posted back in February (post #21). The "ALBR" marking (more commonly seen in text as "AlBr") is an abbreviation for Aluminum Bronze, which is a non-sparking, non-magnetic material. FSN's with that format were in use from 1953 to 1973, and it's easy to see how Schick parlayed their experience with aluminum into aluminum bronze.

EDIT: Also, nice find! And excuse my manners. I often jump straight into the details right past the initial reaction.

 

[Fred Knox]

Federal Stock number is slightly different, although it is an “ALBR”: 5120-264-3794. Thanks Lugz.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Different OAL's. If you look up both part numbers in any government supplier (WB, Part Target, ISO-Group, etc) they both result in the same exact tool and material etc except for OAL. I am not as well versed in stock numbers of that era (1963-1974) as I am in WWII, so I don't understand why the numbers aren't just a few digits different, but that is the reason. Different lengths.

 

[d42jeep]

I found my second Schick pipe wrench at an estate sale today. It’s another early one with no provisions for tensioning the jaw plus the jaw is marked Alcoa. It was fairly corroded but a little elbow grease went a long way.
-Don

 

[alinc100]

Well as of today I can add to the Schick Shtick as this Quick grip came to me at an Estate Sale. Of course no wifi/cell signal in the basement to research GJ before hand but it's so darn light it was easy to carry up and purchase.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Well as of today I can add to the Schick Shtick as this Quick Grip came to me at an Estate Sale

Nice find! I wonder if the jaw inserts are interchangeable with the adjustable pipe wrench jaw inserts. My intuitive money is on YES.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's the first one we have seen on this thread. In fact, I don't think I have seen one close enough to know they had their own name.

I did note the scarcity, here...

Note that there are even rarer Schick wrenches out there, including a DBE wrench and an "alligator" wrench, both also aluminum.

Now all we need is the elusive DBE wrench.

 

[steveandjordan2011@gm]

Ran across this old post while researching this wrench. Schick alum 7001 10in. Are these worth anything?

 

[Mintgrun]

I'm a sucker for strap wrenches and would have bought this even if it'd been unbranded; but the SCHICK marking was a major bonus. It is 18" long. They also made shorter ones.





The doubled-up roll pins are an interesting detail.

Tom

 

[Private Lugnutz]

I had no idea! Love the finger grip at the end of the handle. Very nice find.

 

[leg17]

Speaking of Herbert M. Schick, this guy is GJ hero material through and through.

Herbert survived his daughter (1975) and wife (1979), but believe it or not, I still can't find an obit for him. .....

California state and the US Social Security Adm both list his death date as 23 Oct 1993 in San Mateo.

I can’t find an obit either.
Also cannot find burial details for either Herbert or wife Maye.

Maybe his grandson Gary will check back in with details.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

I finally joined the club this morning!

 

[d42jeep]

That’s a big one but I’ll bet it is surprisingly light.
-Don

 

[Private Lugnutz]

That’s a big one but I’ll bet it is surprisingly light.

Ridiculously, toyishly light! It was the first thing I found - on a $1 table! I was going to take it to my truck, but I really didn't feel like backtracking, and I rested it over my shoulder and carried it the rest of the way Paul Bunyan styler, easily tucking it under my arm when I needed two hands to inspect something. It's like a movie prop!

Upthread, in post #3, I posted a Schick ad where they claimed it was "60% lighter than" its steel equivalent.

Here's a table from a Ridge cat.



60% of 9 lbs 12 ozs is just under ~6 lbs. And 9 lbs 12 ozs minus ~6 lbs is ~3 lbs and change.

They're right!

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Lugz, am I confusing Universal Metal Products of LA with Universal Steel Products of SF?

No, I was! (Sorry for the delayed answer! LOL. I was searching for photos of my 15-inch Auto wrench and this came up. I have now edited to correct.)

 

[ButImNotMadHoney]

Here are some schick wrenches and c clamps all aluminum

 

[four.cycle]

Thank you
@Private Lugnutz is at a Yankees-Phillies game. I have NO doubt he will have something to say about those, as you have (if I am not mistaken) a FOAK there.

I would assume those must be made of a hardened aluminum alloy, yes? Can you scratch it with a knife?

In the meantime:

keep this link handy

and this one too.

Welcome to the site!

 

[ButImNotMadHoney]

Thank you
@Private Lugnutz is at a Yankees-Phillies game. I have NO doubt he will have something to say about those, as you have (if I am not mistaken) a FOAK there.

I would assume those must be made of a hardened aluminum alloy, yes? Can you scratch it with a knife?

In the meantime:

keep this link handy

and this one too.

Welcome to the site!

Yes. They are hardened aluminum. They can be scratched with a knife. Cleaned em up today with a light wire brushing and they still function fine I have a few steel heavy duty clamps like this but can't imagine what you would need an aluminum one for