I’ve discussed various self loading brushes before. But all of them, including the one from 1849 as well as the Brush Plus from the eighties, used soap that was either liquid or semi-liquid. Woodburry P Lefavour’s shaving brush patent from 1890 is the first I’ve seen that used a solid soap.
Inventions are – when all is said and done – solutions to a problem or an improvement to the state of the art. Lefavour claimed that his brush was a new and useful improvement to the humble shaving brush.
Sometimes people files patent applications with the best of intentions, but at the same time a lack of understanding as to what the prior art is. One I recently found was Kevin Monte de Ramos’ Shaving Stick. The application was in 2005, and abaondoned a couple of years later.
Most patents seems to be focused on solving a problem. And the problem Kevin sought to fix, was that you would have to use your hand to apply lather. Or in his own words:
Shaving aids available in the market today come in three primary forms: (a) soaps whipped into a lather and then applied to the face using a brush, (b) creams/gels/lotions dispensed from the container into the hand and then spread across the area to be shaved, or as a (c) liquid astringent splashed onto the body. The use of these shaving aids have a single unifying inconvenience: each requires an intermediary tool to apply the shaving aid onto the skin; namely the user’s hand. Additionally, shaving creams/gels/lotions accumulate to hide the hairs to be shaved. As such, it is often necessary to manually remove excess lubricant before passing the blade near critical hair lines; a man’s sideburn and mustache or a women’s bikini line. Another inconvenience is that shaving kits, cans of shaving cream, and bottles of shaving astringents take up limited space in our travel bags.
From US patent application US11/306,176
For starters, I wouldn’t say that having to use my hand to wield a brush is an inconvenience. But, for the sake of the argument, let’s pretend that it is.
Kevin goes on to describe how he got the idea for his invention while out shopping, wondering why shaving aids didn’t come in a deodorant container. So he went home and tried, and applied for a patent for the idea.
Drawing from From US patent application US11/306,176
Can I just say that Kevin produced an oddly endearing drawing to go with his application?
According to the application, 1a is ‘applicator assembly body’ – i.e.: a deodorant tube. 1b is the lid for the tube, and 1c is the turn knob. 2 is the actual shaving soap, while 3 is the whole assembly. The whole thing is not exactly an un-intuitive step from someone used to deodorants and shaving soaps.
I can think of a couple of reasons why Kevin choose to abandon his patent application. Aside from the money needed to file a full patent, that is.. One is the fact that you would still be inconvenienced by using your hands to apply the shaving stick to your face. Unless, that is, you balances the shaving stick on your vanity and then bend down to rub your face over it.
The other reason is that a shaving stick in a convenient container isn’t a new idea by far. A hundred years ago – eighty years before Kevin filed the application for his shaving stick – you could get such things as Colgate’s Handy-Grip and Safetee in a tin. In short, there was prior art, and probably a lot of it too.
These days, advertisement posters and signs are cheap, cheerful, and on paper. Here today, gone tomorrow. Use and discard. Back in the days however, signs promoting wares could be more durable. Meant to last a long time.
The Great War – which gave us such things as the ComfyKit,1 the smooth shaven soldier, and body shaming the ladies – ended in November 1918. Interestingly enough, that almost immediately prompted a change in how razors were marketed. As an example, I have two advertisements for the GEM khaki kit for you today. One from 1918, and one from 1919.
How are you fixed for blades? I linked to one commercial asking that question a little over ten years ago, but today i found that Gillette updated the ad after the rock and/or roll craze hit.
The origin of the term ‘safety razor’ is a little unclear. As documented over at razors.click, the term did not originate with the Kampfe brothers as so often claimed. But no matter who came up with it, or when, it was in common enough use by 1887 that Gustavus Rein explicitly used it both as the title and in the body of his patent. Which is interesting enough, but what really caught my attention is that the razor that Gustavus Rein patented was a twofer. Not only was it a hoe-style wedge razor, but it could also be used as what we today would call a shavette.
Metallic razor strops must been popular in the middle of the 19th century. Not that long after the self-corroding bimetal hone and the polished metal strop, Jacob Wolf got a patent for an improvement in razor strops. An improvement that included, you guessed it, metal.
Zinc, to be specific. As most of you know, zinc is a fairly soft metal,1 so using it for stropping or honing a razor at least shouldn’t damage the harder steel of the razor.
A couple of years after the invention of the self-corroding metal hone, a Mr Milo A Holcomb was granted a patent for a metallic razor strop. A new and improved polished steel razor strop, to be exact. And compared to a hone what would self destroy through galvanic corrosion, it is a clear improvement.
As can be seen from the drawing, the invention was pretty simple. And the explanation in the patent text is pretty straightforward too. It explains not only how to make the metallic razor strop, but how to use it too:
I form the blade A, of hardened steel, and polish it to the highest degree. The blade is, in general, sufficiently thin to render it more or less flexible; while the handle B, may be thicker, if desired, as shown in the drawings, and may be of steel, iron, or any other convenient and suitable material. The cross section of the blade A, is generally Somewhat rounded, as shown in Fig. 4. The razor should first be brought to a keen edge by means of a hone, or any other instrument in common use. It is then to be applied to the polished surface of this strop till the finest and Smoothest edge is obtained. By its flexibility, the strop may be curved downward, as shown in Fig. 3, so that its surface will come into a little closer contact with the edge of the razor, than will the hone by which the razor is sharpened; and thus it effectually polishes, as it were, the very edge of the razor to the finest keenness.
From US patent 25,265
Patent drawing from US patent 25,265, showing the improved metallic razor strop
The strop were to be made out of thin, flexible steel. A natural choice at the time would been a spring steel. That is a medium to high carbon steel with a high yield strength. In 1859, when the metallic razor strop was patented, this would likely been a blister or crucible steel.
I don’t use nor hone straight edge razors, so I’m a bit lacking in knowhow on how to put a keen edge on a straight. I am however not entirely convinced that running a already sharpened blade over a polished steel surface would do much good. But I’m more than happy to be corrected on that point if someone actually knows the answer.
Milo does point out that he isn’t intending for the flexible steel strop to burnish1 the razor. But his description of lessening and polishing the edge of the razor sounds very much like burnishing to me. Perhaps Milo had some way of distinguishing between burnishing and burnishing…
The patent is long expired. And since a quick search shows no stainless steel hones for sale, I would say the marked for this kind of hone has long expired too.
Every age has its share of cranks and quacks. These are usually found peddling the miracle cure of the day – be it radioactivity, magnetism, or – as it was in the middle of the 19th century – electricity. And after reading the patent description for a metallic hone, I’m unsure if old William was a crank or a quack.
William was awarded his patent in 1855, making this one of the oldest patents I’ve looked at so far. And to William’s defence, this is one of the more straightforward and easy to read patents I’ve seen in a while.
