Razor: Gillette Single Ring
Blade: Feather Hi-Stainless
Brush: Brush Experimental Alpha
Lather: Mike’s Natural Soaps Orange, Cedarwood & Black Pepper
Tried shaving in the shower, as some guys swears to… for me it was more swearing at, but ended up with a two pass SAS.
Pores. We all have them and – at least according to this advertisement that was printed in Illustrated London News in 1899 – they are always open, just waiting for an impure particle to enter so it can mingle with the life-giving current of our blood and kill us… impure particles such as a lesser brand of shaving soap, since – allegedly – nothing comes closer to our skin than the lather we shave with.
FUD based advertisement at it’s finest… for starters, I’m not entirely convinced that you could force soap inside your pores with a brush unless you tried very hard – nor am I convinced that pores opens directly into the blood stream… unless a lot of the biology I learned in school was completely off the mark. The worst an impure soap can do is to give you horrible skin problems; clogged pores, acne, pimples, boils, and abscesses… some of which could – in the days before antibiotics and modern medicine – be fatal if left untreated. So I guess whoever wrote the advertisement had a point in that you should avoid soaps with questionable ingredients, even if the explanation is off the mark.
That said, one shilling for a shaving stick or luxury shaving tablet (and just half that – six pence – for an ‘American shaving tablet’) don’t sounds too bad – until you realised that adjusted for inflation it’s close to 6.50£ or 8.10$ – not expensive, but not cheap either.
Razor: Gillette Single Ring
Blade: Feather Hi-Stainless
Brush: Artesania Romera Manchurian Badger, imitation horn
Lather: Pereira Shavery Orange Blossom w/ activated charcoal
Aftershave: BullDog Sensitive Aftershave Balm
Additional Care: Alum Block & BullDog Original Beard Balm
Today’s patent isn’t all that unique, apart from being invented by the same gentleman whom patented the travel razor I looked at last Thursday. It is one of the recurring self-feeding or fountain shaving brushes – of which I’ve snarked on several before1 – and the claimed improvement was in the way it was made.
The principal object of the invention is to provide a simply constructed and efficiently operating device, which is sanitary in use, sightly in appearance and may be economical manufactured.
Christian E A Gronbech, US 1,1409,168
As can be seen from the drawing, the handle of the brush is hollow, with a threaded rod down the centre. The cap on the base of the handle is secured to the rod by means of a screw – allowing the rod to be turned – and a plunger or piston rides on the rod. A pair of longitudinal indentation – or ridges, if you prefer – is pressed into the sides of the handle (refer to figure 2 on the drawing) for the plunger to ride on as it’s screwed up and down.
The plunger itself is a sandwiched construction, consisting of two disks with a washer between them. While the patent text don’t specify, I suspect that the two disks (24) was meant to be metal while the washer was made of rubber – thus creating a seal against the sidewalls of the handle.
The knot sits in a base (15) which is secured to the handle by means of screw threads (12y), and can be removed by the user – has to be removed in fact, in order to refill soap paste. The base has a hole in the middle to allow soap paste to enter the brush.
As the cap is turned and the plunger pushes towards the knot, the soap paste in the handle is forced past openings (ducts and an axial bore) in the rod and into the knot, allowing the user to lather up and get shaving.
When the handle is empty of the soap paste, the user is meant to unscrew the knot, move the plunger all the way to the back of the handle by means of the cap, and refill the handle from a small tube screwed into a threaded hole under the knot – an air hole allowed for the air in the handle to be expelled during this operation.
Looking at the drawing, it’s obvious that most of the parts can be constructed by stamping sheet metal and off the shelf pieces (like the screw rod and screw), allowing for fast, inexpensive manufacture with minimal machining. The handle can even be a length of extruded aluminium if someone wants to make this today, and it don’t even have to be round as long as the plunger is a tight fit (if it’s not round you wouldn’t necessarily need the pair of ridges either).
Patented at about the same time as his handleless travel razors, Gronbech’s self feeding brush would have made a nice addition to the dopp bag since it would have done away with the need to carry a tube of soap separably. However it does suffer from the same fault as all self feeding shaving brushes I’ve seen so far; the soap is introduced to the base of the knot, not towards the tips where the lather is actually built.
Razor: Gillette Single Ring
Blade: Feather Hi-Stainless
Brush: Vie-Long #12705B
Lather: Prairie Creations Walter
Aftershave: BullDog Sensitive Aftershave Balm
Additional Care: Alum Block & Gentlemen of Sweden Original Beard Oil
Razor: Gillette “Blue”
Blade: Feather Hi-Stainless
Brush: Wilkinson Sword Badger
Pre-Shave: The Lavish Gentleman Natural Strength Oil Cleanser
Lather: Proraso Menthol & Eucalyptus
Aftershave: Barber No3 Marmara
Additional Care: Alum Block, Gentlemen of Sweden Original Beard Oil, & Pereira Shavery Boomerang Beard Comb
Way back in the Olden Days – May of 2015 to be exact – I posted about a tiny little travel razor I had found some photos of and were fascinated by. The logo on the back points to Bigelow and Perkin Co, a company that operated out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A very similar, close to identical, razor was manufactured by Gronbech – likely in Woodhaven, New York – was marketed under the names of Groenbech and Handy. Additionally – according to Waits’ Compendium – there was at least one unmarked copy of this style of travel razor marketed in the 20’s.
More recently I managed to track down the actual patents for it, all filed by Mr Christian E A Gronbech; US 1,370,9351 – granted on March 8th 1920, US 1,370,960 granted same date, and US 1,376,759 granted on May 3rd 1921. While the three are broadly similar, there is an interesting difference: The two later is set up to be adjustable, after a fashion. As the patent texts says:
…the invention comprises a blade holder, in which the blade may be adjusted, such blade holder provided with means cooperating with complemental means in a part of the razor for securely retaining the blade in adjusted position in the razor
Christian E A Gronbech, US 1,370,960
Another object is to provide in a razor of this kind, simple means for adjusting the depth or protrusion of the cutting edge of the blade so as to secure a more or less close shaving action, as may be desired.
Christian E A Gronbech, US 1,376,769
The big difference between the patents is for what kind of blade they are set up for; 1,370,935 is set up for three hole Gillette blades (which means modern DE blades will fit), 1,370,760 is set up for Christy style (spineless, with or without ears) single edge blades, while 1,376,759 can accept both of the former as well as EverReady/GEM style blades (single edge with spine).
While the razor set up for Gillette blades simply have a pair of studs in the top cap lining up with matching holes in the bottom, the ones for Christy and GEM style blades utilises different forms of holders. The holder for Christy style blades held the blade by a pair of simple tabs that reached over the blade, while the latest patent included the option of using three different kind of holders; one for single edged blades with a spine, one for single edged spineless blades and one for Gillette style double edged blades – even if just one edge was exposed in the razor. The patent text describes it as follows:
…designed to interchangeably receive different kinds of blades, without requiring any adjustment or rearrangement of the parts of the razor.
Christian E A Gronbech, US 1,376,769
It is the use of holders that provide the ability to adjust how aggressive the razor is, by adjusting how much of the edge is exposed. for the first form of holder – as described in US 1,370,960 – the user would adjust how much the edge stuck out by sliding the blade back and forth in the holder. The holders described in US 1,376,759 used a different trick, and was adjusted by an inclined tab sticking down from the holder into an inclined slot – so that sliding the holder from side to side would also push the edge in and out of the razor.
Seeing the three patents in succession, it’s easy to see how the idea of a simple vest-pocket razor evolved from a razor consisting of four stamped parts (and two pins) that would accept a single style of blade into a more refined, adjustable vest-pocket razor consisting of five stamped parts (and two pins) that accepted the three major styles of blades available at the time. With that in mind it’s kind of sad that the only version that seems to have made it to production in any numbers was the simple one for double edged blades.
Razor: Gillette “Blue”
Blade: Feather Hi-Stainless
Brush: Vie-Long #14033
Pre-Shave: The Lavish Gentleman Natural Strength Oil Cleanser
Lather: Jabonman Mediterráno L.E. BullGoose
Aftershave: BullDog Sensitive Aftershave Balm
Additional Care: Alum Block, Gentlemen of Sweden Original Beard Oil, & Pereira Shavery Boomerang Beard Comb
While it may seem a waste of time for us today, living – as we do – in the era of inexpensive, stainless razor blades, less than a century ago people actually stropped their razor blades in order to keep them sharper for longer. A number or razors even came with blade holders in order to make this process easier, but what if your razor didn’t come with one, or you had several different razors you wanted to strop the blades for?
Fear not, because in 1930 Mr David J Prince patented an improvement to the safety-razor-blade holder that would accept any major blade on the marked!
…a convenient, inexpensive holder for razor blades when it is desired to sharpen the same by stropping and it particularly seeks to provide a holder which will take either Valet, Christy, Gillette or Durham type blades, or those having backs such as the Gem, EverReady, Star and other well known kinds.
David J Price
For those who are not familiar with the different blades, that don’t sound too difficult.. but one have to keep in mind that this would include single and double edged blades, with and without holes and slits, with and without ears, and with and without a thick spine along the back. All told an impressive range of shapes and thicknesses that the design have to account for.
As can be seen from the patent drawing, the blade holder consisted of two hinged plates that clamped the blade between them. Since each plate had ‘half’ a screw on the end, tightening the handle on the blade holder locked the two plates together and clamped the blade securely. Or as the patent describes it, each plate:
…has a threaded shank 2 at one end and a hinge ear 4 at the other end, the threaded shank having a portion cut away.
David J Price
The plates had groves or cutout int he middle of them as well as a couple of holes drilled through, and for different blade styles there would be different ways for securing the blade;
All told a simple and ingenious solution to the problem of providing clamping pressure on a variety of blades -as long as you didn’t loose the two studs that is. One improvement I can see immediately would be to give the studs threads on the part that fitted into the holes in the holder – said holes would have to be threaded too – and when stropping a blade without holes simply fasten them on the outside of the plate.
I can also see this being useful as a simple, cheerful and somewhat scary kamisori-style shavette – one that allowed a shaver to experiment with several different styles of blades, although the selection in this day and age is smaller than it was in the late 20’s and early 30’s.1
As far as I can tell, this is the only razor or shaving related patent Mr Price filed for, which is a shame, cause I would have loved to see if he could come up with a razor that fitted multiple styles of blades as well.
Razor: Merkur 39C Slant
Blade: Wilkinson Sword
Brush: Vie-Long #13051M
Pre-Shave: The Lavish Gentleman Natural Strength Oil Cleanser
Lather: Wet Shaving Products Pre-production Sample
Aftershave: BullDog Original Aftershave Balm
Additional Care: Alum Block & Gentlemen of Sweden Original Beard Oil