Razor handles can apparently be used to store many things. In the past I’ve riffed on razors with styptic pencils, shaving cream, and even pens in the handle. It is an idea that don’t seem to want to die, as proven by Arthur E Keene’s 1943 patent for a soap-containing safety razor. While Arthur’s invention shares some traits with most of the razors that have things in the handle,¹ it has a couple of interesting ideas I have not seen elsewhere.

But first, let us see what Arthur wanted to achieve with his invention:

An important object of the invention is to provide a razor of the self-contained type, having pneumatically controlled means for ejecting shaving cream and delivering the shaving cream to the outer surface of the razor blade holder of the razor

From US patent 2,327,192

Self contained, and able to spray shaving soap by air pressure with some degree of control. Sounds… odd. But the way Arthur designed his soap-containing razor, it was doable.

As can be seen from the drawing, the handle consisted of several parts. Starting innermost, there is a flexible soap-containing sack.² Surrounding the sack is a pressure vessel. And outermost there is a sleeve that can be moved up and down.

The whole things works more or less like a good old bicycle pump. A set of valves and washers means that by pumping the outer sleeve up and down, the pressure vessel is pressurised. This means that the shaving cream in the sack is under pressure too.

Then the shaver can operate the valve³ near the head of the razor, and shaving cream will shoot out of the hole on top of the razor head. Be sure to point towards your face first though. If more shaving cream is needed during the shave, just squirt out some more.

There is a neat way to depressurise the handle after shaving too, likely to prevent leaks. By lining the cut-out⁴ in the sleeve up with a protrusion⁵ on the pressure vessel, the sleeve could be pushed far enough to depress a relief valve. This dumped the pressure through a set of openings.

Mechanically, I see no reason why Arthur’s soap-containing safety razor shouldn’t work as intended. It is the concept itself I find of dubious value. Although… it could be fun to see just how far across the bathroom it could squirt shaving cream.

The full patent can be read at Google Patents.

Footnotes

1. Having an awkwardly large handle, for starters.
2. While the text do not specify, I expect this would be made from rubber or rubberised fabric.
3. Labelled as 9 in the drawing.
4. Labelled as 26 in the drawing.
5. Labelled as 27 in the drawing.