At the turn of the last century, Amos H Jackson patented a one piece razor made from sheet metal. Well, he patented two, but the first one was not quite a one piece razor.

This isn’t the first sheet metal razor we’ve looked at, and not even the first one piece razor made from sheet metal. In the past, I’ve talked about Camfield’s sheet metal injector, Parkinson’s neat folded razor, Osborn’s Shrp-Shavr, and – my favourite – Ballreich’s very simple single edge razor. What makes Amos’ razor stand out is the fact that it uses wedge blades.

Amos was very upfront about what he wanted to achieve with his invention. To quote;

The prime object of the invention is to simplify and cheapen the cost of production of this class of razors, and this object is accomplished by reducing the number of parts to the lowest possible number without affecting the shaving qualities of the implement. In the present instance the blade forms one part, and the guard, handle, and clamping means form the other part, these latter parts being constructed from a single piece of metal.

In short, Amos wanted a one piece razor that was simple and cheap. And he did this by stamping his razor out of a sheet of spring metal.

The The razor starts life as a flat stamping, as shown in Fig 1 on the drawing.

The vague E-shape on the left side is folded to make the bottom plate and guard, while the upper and lower arm is folded over to make the clamping lips.

The handle is made by folding over the upper and lower part of the O-shape on the right.

And that… is that. One one piece razor, ready for use. Just remember to clean and deburr it after manufacture.

The guard is shown as a comb in most of the drawings, but I see no reason why it can’t be left as a safety bar. I also don’t see why this one piece razor couldn’t be set up to take a GEM-blade. You would have to adjust the clamping lips, but that is about it.

As for Amos’ first patent for a not quite one piece razor, it differed mainly in using a set screw to secure the blade. What in the fully developed razor were clamping lips, were mere clasps on the first model. And the handle looks a lot less comfortable.

Amos’ one piece razor differs from many of the patents I’ve covered by the simple fact that it was actually manufactured, and sold under the name Swift. It is featured in Waits’ Compendium on page 157 and 328. From what i can tell, it was sold with two wedge blades and a stropping tool.

You can read the full text for Amos’ one piece razor at Google Patents.