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Curious: You see these items all over EBay every day. Which machines actually came equipped with these little grease & oil cans ??

Here's a copy of an original "packing/shipping" slip from about December 1917 for C 250 SN 42xxx, note the contents of each machine series listed on it.

Here's another of mine; a post-1919 version packing slip for H-19 SN 62729:

Thanks - none of my machines have an intact label,,, so now I know

How about these oil bottles? I assume these were sold by the jobbers and did not come with the machines ??

So was 1919 the change over from bottles to jars for the grease?

BwanaJoe wrote:So was 1919 the change over from bottles to jars for the grease?

That's an interesting question, and I don't know the answer.

Some "cheapening" I've noticed while researching the Chippendale appears to have begun around the beginning of American involvement in the "Great War", sometime in early 1917; the pinstriping disappears on the motor-plate, for example, but the Electric Automatic Stop appears.

The motor-plate casting also changed at some point prior to 1919, in the form of lightening them. Whether this was a function of reducing the cost of shipping (weight), or material (shortages), I don't know.

I would think cost-cutting was always an ongoing part of manufacturing, and under constant scrutiny.

Fran

I've never seen a "bottle" of Edison grease. Tubes and jars, but never a bottle. Was this a typo?

George P.

Hi All,
My thought is that the wooden patterns use to make the molds for the bed plates may have needed to be replace due to age and the new patterns were made thinner. Additionally, this would reduce weight which might have been as or more desirable as reducing cost and it may also have been a different molding material used in the cope and drag allowed for a thinner plate. Example green sand molding material may have required the thicker plate and later the use of a liner for the top of the plate to minimize initial surface roughness allowed a thinner plate and lower higher molding cost but lower production production cost i.e. lower cost to smooth the top surface.
Best Regards,
Allen

A Ford 1 wrote:Hi All,
My thought is that the wooden patterns use to make the molds for the bed plates may have needed to be replace due to age and the new patterns were made thinner. Additionally, this would reduce weight which might have been as or more desirable as reducing cost and it may also have been a different molding material used in the cope and drag allowed for a thinner plate. Example green sand molding material may have required the thicker plate and later the use of a liner for the top of the plate to minimize initial surface roughness allowed a thinner plate and lower higher molding cost but lower production production cost i.e. lower cost to smooth the top surface.
Best Regards,
Allen

That's interesting, Allen.

Another point I should make directly related to your explanation: not only is it thinner and therefore lighter, but it was also re-engineered to the point of a circular depression cast into the top surface (under where the turntable is to be located) as opposed to the previously continuous flat surface.

As well, the gussets on the underside were relocated and smaller/thinner.

Apparently there was quite a redesign involved considering the impact these deceptively minor changes would have had on the mounted parts.

Fran