Sometimes I peek at a patent because the name of the inventors reminds me of someone. This was one of those times, and I’m happy I did. Mr Nordskog filed his patent for a “new and useful safety-razor” in early 1919. According to the claim, the object was to:

…provide a safety razor of simple, and inexpensive construction particularly designed for shaving ordinary inaccessible parts of the body, and having the protective features of a safety razor.

US patent 1,342,028

There is little new to the construction of the razor. It is a fairly typical three piece razor, with a top cap, baseplate, and handle. But the novelty – or improvement – is in the shape of the head. One side is flat, like most safety razors, but the other side is curved. The ends are also curved, and edged.

I assume, based on the shape, that the “inaccessible parts of the body” Mr Nordskog wanted to shave included armpits. The back side of the head should be reasonable well suited to shave a concave area. The rounded edges on the ends could fit into other nocks and crevices found on the human body, although I cannot imagine where exactly… probably for the best.

Of particular interest is the blade, as depicted in Figure 8 of the drawing. Unlike the inventor of four edge razor we looked at last week, Mr Nordskog clearly knew a bit of how steel bends. I quote:

An ordinary fiat blade cannot be bent into the form of a portion of a sphere without ,breaking the blade Something is therefore necessary to make it possible to bend the blade into the desired shape from its flat shape without injury to the blade. This desirable structure have accomplished by forming the blade with the slot 19 and the holes 20 at the ends of the slot. Where the slot and holes are employed, the blade can be bent readily into proper shape between the holder and the guard without injury to the blade.

US patent 1,342,028

In effect, Mr Nordskog came up with the slotted blade well before it was patented for the Probak/Goodwill or by Mr Thompson, although for a very different reason. Gaisman and Thompson was trying to come up with a blade that only fitted in their razors but not the competitions new models, while Mr Nordskog tried to get the blade to bend without buckling.

The full text of Mr Nordskog’s patent can be read at Google Patents.