Black Friday is upon us again, and I would like to offer everyone a free – that is free as you don’t have to pay – digital copy of my book for Kindle!
Between Thursday 25th and Sunday 28th, head over to the Kindle Store – aka Amazon – and sag yourself a free copy to read on your Kindle or other device (Kindle app required). If you don’t want a digital copy, you can also get it in paperback – but sadly I cannot give those away for free.
Enjoy Thanksgiving and the weekend!
Even a neat freak like to shave. And to make things tidy afterwards. Which is why the square shaving cup invented by Vincent Arra might be just the thing. Patent was filed in 1952, and granted in 1956, and have more numbers and arrows than most patents for shaving cups.
A lot more numbers and arrows. Let’s pick those apart, shall we?
Continue readingMost of the shaving cup and shaving mug patents I’ve have riffed on are old. Some are very old. But today I have a patent for a modern shaving cup to share – patented only twenty nine years ago!
Continue readingBook titles were longer in the past. I suspect this was at least partly down to people having more time. That, and the fact that your book’s title was the first impression the potential reader got, so it better tell the reader what the book was all about.
Continue readingA few days ago I wrote about a disposable revolving razor from 1966. Unshockingly – since there is nothing new under the sun – I found a broadly similar idea patented a few years prior. Funnily enough, the patent filed by Mr Alfred Curci1 is – in my eyes at least – an improvement upon the idea patented later.
I guess the chicken came before the egg, in the case of disposable revolving razors.
Continue readingI’ve been wetshaving and enjoying the simple pleasures of a good shave for a while now.
Say… about eleven years and four-ish months. I’ve also been blogging about – and advocating for – traditional wetshaving for a while. This blog is nine years, six months, and twenty six years old today – or at least, that is how long it has been since the first post went live.
But this blog is not the first time I posted about the benefits and enjoyment of traditional wetshaving. The first public, on the net for all to see, post I ever made about wetshaving was eleven years ago today.1 I was in Africa at the time, in southern Sudan to be specific. In what a few months later became South Sudan, in fact. And below is a verbatim copy of that post, typos and all:
Simple pleasures
It is something very satisfying to whip up your own lather before shaving… to see a tiny bit of shaving cream and a few drops of water turn into a nice, thick, rich and nice smelling lather. The slightly cool feel as the eucalyptus and menthol lather first touches, and then covers, most of the face – and then taking it off with long, controlled strokes with my old fashioned safety razor. A quick splash of water, and then the sting of the alum as it finds the small nicks and scratches that I couldn’t see in the mirror.For those that are curious:
– Parker 22R safety razor – considered to be a somewhat aggressive razor, but it suits my face just fine. Nice long handle, easy to change / clean blades.
Copy of a post from my old blog known as “Blog From Unmis“
– Feather Light blade – claimed to be the sharpest blade there is. Might well be, todays blade have seen 10-12 shaves already and is still sharper than my gillete ever was.
– Proraso shaving cream w/ eucalyptus oil and menthol. Large tube, long lasting, smells and feels good.
– Piece of Alum on a string. Stings, but helps seal the nicks and cuts really good.
I still uses the Parker razor – in fact, it was the razor in my rotation this past week. Feather blades still features in my shaves, even if I only pair them with mild razors today. It’s not that long ago since I picked up a new tube of Proraso cream. And I still uses alum daily, but it stings a lot less now – since I don’t get as many nicks.
I have more than a few more razors than I did when I made that post all those years ago. I got more brushes too. And aftershaves. And a lot more soaps. I also have a significantly better technique then I had then
But one thing has not changed. There are still simple pleasures to be had in the morning, in between crawling out of bed and heading to work. There are still the simple pleasures of making lather, putting it on my face, and shaving. I still take that time to ground myself and enjoy a moment of zen.
The people who write copy for advertisements must be – I feel – a special breed. Not only do they have to be able to twist the truth and lie with a smile, but if ordinary words don’t cut it, they have to come up with new words. Like this one; Stroned.
Continue readingThere are good ideas. There are bad ideas. And there are weird ideas. And this patent – which I can only think of as a revolver razor – is definitely a weird idea. Although I’m sure the intentions were good. Imaginably titled “disposable multi-bladed safety razor”, the patent was filed by Mr William M Choate in September 1966, and granted two and a half years later.
The basic idea is sound; Why should a disposable razor be good for only one – or at best, a few – shave?
Continue readingAfter several years of not working – the screen being dead – my beloved Psion Series 5 Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) is alive again. It turns out there is still a marked for repairing these neat PDAs almost a quarter century after they were first introduced. So now that it is alive again, let us have a closer look at this vintage tech. This will be a very different review to what I usually do.
Continue readingNot all razors are meant to become heirlooms. Some are meant simply to be a disposable razor. Or, as Roy E Mullen said it in his 1966 patent application:
Continue readingThere are many occasions when an individual would find the use of a good razor to be a comfort and convenience, under circumstances where the services of a barber are not readily available and where it is either undesirable or uneconomical to purchase an ordinary razor.
From US patent 3,413,720