Tag Archives: Gear

A “improved” shaving mug and a stray idea for a modern application

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A lot of inventions aim at improving something that is already simple and functional, often to solve imaginary or minor problems. The improved shaving mug that David Heston patented in early 1875 do have some potential though… more about that later.

Having observed that the common shaving mug of the day was made for having a soap in the bottom, and therefore was fairly large and made it awkward for travel and storage, Mr Heston invented and patented one that was modular… in his own words:

…a shaving cup of detachable sections. It also consists in a soap-receptacle made detachable from the body of the cup, and constituting an integral portion thereof.

Mr Heston was limited by the technology of his time, so the drawing shows a bayonet joint between the soap cup and the shaving mug proper – today we would likely use threads instead, and indeed Mr Heston points that out as an alternative.

It will be seen that the cup may be easily produced, and for transportation packed in small compass. Provision is also made for filling the lower receptacle U with soap or shaving compound without. introduction through, or independent of, the top portion B, and the entire inner face of the cup is most readily accessible for purposes of cleansing.

Or in short: Simple to make, simple to transport, easy to put the soap in the bottom part, easy to clean the top part.
Looking at this patent, it suddenly occurred to me that artisan and small scale manufacturers of shaving soap today often use plastic containers for their soaps of a standardised size… either standardised across their own range, or even across several makers (I assume this is due to sourcing their containers from the same place). This means that they could design a screw on shaving mug to fit their hard soaps… allowing modern shavers to enjoy the traditional way of using a shaving mug without taking up too much space in their den. Another option would be to sell a version of this with multiple bottom parts, so the enterprising shaver could fill the soap cups with the soap of his choice. I’m just tossing the idea out there the patent is long expired, so it’s a free for all.

…certain new and useful Improvements in Safety-Razors – what might have been

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In 1907 William H Crichton-Clarke – most likely working for Gillette – patented what he described as a useful improvement in safety razors… in particular an improvement to simplify and reduce the number of parts in the razor.

Before looking at the patent it is worth remembering that the Gillette Old Type we know and love is made out of at least five pieces:

  • The top cap, with two pins and a threaded stud
  • The base plate, with three holes
  • The “nut”, which forms the top of the handle
  • A tube that forms the handle
  • The ball that forms the end of the handle.

The last three pieces is permanently joined together into one unit. If the only objective was to reduce the number of parts the handle could have been machined out from a single piece. However this approach would make a heavier razor which used more metal to make, thus likely making it more expensive to manufacture and ship.

William choose a different route, creating a razor which would retain the hollow handle and reduce the number of parts by… hmm.. one.

Click to make bigger – it’s worth a close look

Instead of having a threaded stud on the top cap that threaded into the handle, the top cap now have the female end of the thread, and is screwed onto the threaded end of the handle. The base plate is secured to the end of the handle by means of a collar, which in turn is held in place by a couple of tiny bolts or pins.

In the words of William himself:

A razor comprising a cap having a threaded opening, a guard, and a handle rotatably swivelled on the guard and having an enlarged threaded extension at its upper end projecting above the guard and adapted to engage the threaded opening of the cap, and means for preventing axial movement of the handle relative to the guard

One major benefit I can see from a manufacturing perspective is the fact that you no longer have to fit together three separate pieces to make the handle. The machining should also be a bit more straight forward.

The major downside I can see is visible in the lower left corner of the drawing; The blades would have to change. And while the ‘new’ blade – with the enlarged centre hole – might work on the old razors, the old style blade would not fit in this improved and simplified safety razor. And that is probably what killed this project when all is said and done.

Heel-tastic – foot rescue in stick form

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To paraphrase my sergant in boot camp; Take care of your feet and your feet will take care of you…

Wearing marching boots all day at work can be pretty rough on your feet, and my feet were getting pretty nasty… dry, cracking and generally sore. Not a pretty sight, and just filing and lotion before bedtime didn’t do much. But then my beloved wife spotted this:

While the name is a bad pun and the ingredient list is full of stuff you definitely don’t want in your shaving soap, it actually works very well. While my feet ain’t baby smooth by far and I still need to grind the hard skin off every evening, all the crack and a lot of the soreness is gone.

If you have cracking heels and dry feet, and if you can find it, definitely give the Heel-tastic a chance. It helped me enough that I’m devoting space in my GoBag for a stick of it.

The most adorable DE: Laurel Ladies Boudoir Razor, with known provenance

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My beloved wife seems to think that miniature versions of things are cute and adorable. With that in mind, the Laurel Ladies Boudoir Razor must be the most adorable DE ever.

Waits – in his excellent Razor Compendium – have the following to say about this razor:

Laurel Ladies Boudoir Razor
George H Lawrence, Limited, Sheffield, England. Small “Ladies Boudoir” double-edged safety razor and special blades in metal lithographed tins and plastics cases.

The razor itself is indeed small – as can be seen from the photos – and the blades are downright tine. The design seems to be a scaled down version of the Laurel “Dumb Bell” Razor from 1934, which sort of gives a lower end to when the Ladies Boudoir was manufactured. There is some indications online that the Ladies Boudoir was meant as an cosmetic razor, ie.: for trimming eyebrows and removing unsightly hairs, rather than for shaving armpits and the like.

My Ladies Boudoir came to me via a friend of the family, after he died several years ago – the same source as my EverReady 1914.
According to what I know, he picked it up in England during the War (World War Two, that is) and carried it in his pocket when he parachuted into Nazi occupied Norway as a commando/resistance fighter/saboteur – what we today would likely identify as a Special Forces Operator. The idea behind bringing it was that if he got separated from his equipment – which was dropped in a separate container – he would be able to make his way to a civilised area, and give himself a shave before contacting anyone so he wouldn’t immediately give himself away as one of  the “boys in the forest” (a commonly used term for the Norwegian Resistance).
As luck would have it, he didn’t get away from his gear and the other resistance fighters was on the agreed upon meeting spot, so the razor sat unused in his pocket until the end of the war, and then among his mementos until it made it’s way to me.

As can be seen from the photos, the blade – and thus the razor’s head – is about ¼ of the size of a “real” DE razor. The handle is equally diminutive, and feels too thin to control in my hands at least. A nimble lady – or a WW2 Norwegian Commando whom on occasion disguised himself as a young teen – might find it easier to use than I would. My calipers gives the total length of the assembled razor as 38.3mm (1.5″), while the head measures 21.6mm by 12.8mm (0.85″ by 0.52″) – so either you go by looks of by the numbers, this is a tiny razor.
The Ladies Boudoir is of all metal construction; some online sources suggest that the base cap should be made of plastic or Bakelite, but from the wear and tear it’s plain that the one I inherited at least have a metal base with a black coating.
While it’s not my oldest razor, nor a razor I’ll ever actually use, the Laurel Ladies Boudoir is one of the last razors I own that I’ll ever give up. The history and provenance of it makes it beyond priceless to me.

New arrival – The Lavish Gentleman Charcoal Mask

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So I ordered some more of the facial cleanings oil from The Lavish Gentleman I reviewed in the end of January.

Graciously they not only gave me free shipping to Norway, on top of the 15% off, but they also put in a free gift; a jar of their Detoxifying Charcoal Mask. My beloved wife have been at me from time to time about using masks to clear up my skin (working in a dusty environment can cause a lot of clogged pores), so she’s having a chuckle over me actually trying this.

Packaging was top notch, survived the trip over here in good condition. I’ll let y’all know how the mask works out for me in a couple of weeks.

Small homemade spruce shaving bowl

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An hour on the lathe to get out of the way yielded a small spruce shaving bowl. Started with some leftover 2×4, finished with mineral oil and two coats of superglue finish.

It’s tested and working well for lathering. It’s admittedly a bit on the tiny side, but when you start with a 2×4 it’s a limit to how wide it can be without spending the time to glue up a blank.

Walled gardens, and how they apply to shaving

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A lot of modern shave gear can be seen as part of a walled garden; a term most often used around computers that describe a closed platform where a single entity (provider) has control over applications, content, and media, and restricts convenient access to non-approved applications or content.

If you’re shaving with a cartridge razor, in theory at least you have to get your blades from the same guys who sold you the handle – and often not all of their cartridges fits all of their handles either. You can’t stick a Sensor Excel cartridge on a Mach3 or Fusion5 handle, and you certainly can’t expect a Schick cartridge of any kind to fit on any Gillette handle.

Unless you’re buying more handles, you’re locked to one brand and (in theory at least) one vendor. And given how hard some of those vendors advertise their canned goo and other shaving accoutrements, I get the feeling they would make their razors incompatible with their competitors canned goo if they could…  

Yes, you’re getting a unified and consistent experience. Some users value and appreciate that, and I’m cool with the fact that they do. It don’t chance the underlying fact that cartridge razors is a series of closed platforms designed to make the end user dependent on the OEM.

Traditional safety razors on the other hand are open platform solutions. Yes, there is a number of distinct, non-compatible platforms; DE, SE, injectors and so on. But I can pick up any DE razor from a large number of wildly different manufacturers and be confident that any DE blade I buy will fit and work in the razor – same as any razor made for the GEM blade will take any GEM blade I can buy.

The underlying standards are open and accessible to all – anyone with the skills, drive and money can make and sell razors or blades. Since the patents are long expired, traditional wetshaving is in essence Open Source Hardware, with all the benefits (and drawbacks) that entails.

I’m not saying traditional safety razors are inherently better than cartridge razors. I’m saying they are inherently more open in this day and age, and to me that is an important thing.

Bessegg razor – made in Norway during the War

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A lot of Norwegian Museums is part of what they call “The Digital Museum”, where you can search and browse the collections without having to actually go to a museum you didn’t even know existed in the first place.

As – for instance – the museum at Tana, located in one of the few buildings in Finnmark that wasn’t burn down by the retreating Nazis in 1944… I had never ever heard about the place until I was poking around trying to find more images of Norwegian razor blades and found this instead:
Click to make bigger – it’s worth a closer look.
It’s an advertisement for a razor manufactured in Norway! While I cannot make out any date printed on it, it’s most likely from the War. The text translates as:
On top:

The first Norwegian!

In the little box to the right of the drawing:

A new (torn word – perhaps ‘product’?)
The Besegg razor have a smooth protecting edge instead of the normal teeth.
The protective edge provides a perfectly efficient safety.

Under the drawing:

BESEGG RAZOR
A BETTER SHAVE

Left side of the table:

ADVANTAGES
1. Better, easier, more comfortable shaves
2. Greater safety
3. Easier cleaning
4. Solid, exact and beautiful construction
5. Made in Norway

Right side of the table:

PRICES
Sports model – 5 kroner
Standard model – 6 kroner
Gift model #1 – 10 kroner
Gift model #2 – 12 kroner
For the normal style of razor blades

Bottom:

THE RAZOR WITHOUT TEETH

The very small print:

Printed at Fabritius, Oslo / Besegg Manufacture Inc., Oslo

I’m fairly convinced the actual razor was a knock off or a near copy of a foreign design, or a chimera of different design elements from foreign razors.

5 kroner back in ’44 would be the equivalent of about 112 kroner today, or about 13.25 USD. However; the average yearly income was – according to my sources – 4260 kroner, so the cheapest model would cost 0.12% of your yearly income… not a small amount when you do the math.

Sidebar / fun factoid: Fabritius was a long established printer in Oslo, operating from 1844 to 1991.

Norway’s oldest soap factory – another bit of history

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So I was poking around on the internet again, and stumbled over a reference to “Balder Barbersåpe” – ie: the shaving soap of the Norse god of light, joy, purity and the summer sun, son of Odin (Wotan) and Frigg (Frige) – and off course I had to dig more.

So spooling back to 1858, a 19 year old boy travelled from Kristiansand (south coast of Norway) to Schleswig (then southern Denmark, now northern Germany and further on to Neuwild by the Rhine before wrapping up in Holland.. his mission? Learn to make soap!

Returning to his home town in 1859, the now 20 year old young man started his own factory for making soap and candles – the first dedicated soap factory in Norway -and named it Walhalla (as the spelling was at the tme)

As for the selection of goods, it was fairly diverse; candles made from tallow and wax, colognes, hair oils, some incense, so called “green soap” (a soft soap made from potash and fats) and – most interesting for us – shaving soap.

“Balder – the soap is mild and clean and free of all harsh chemicals. It’s long lasting and cheap to use.”
Calling your shaving soap for Balder makes a lot of sense when your factory is Valhalla. The package in the image is from the 30’s, as can be guessed from the art and colour scheme.

As for when the factory closed / was sold / changed names I don’t know.. last solid reference I got from a quick search is from 1953, when the factory was almost a century old. There is a current company with the same name in Norway, but it’s only a couple of years old and don’t make soaps at all.