When we’re taught about great innovations in the history of manufacturing and design, we’re often told that prior to 1900, the only way that men had to shave themselves was to use a cutthroat razor – three inches of hollow-ground steel sharpened to a lethal edge, and which could be fatal if you didn’t know how to use one correctly. We’re then taught that all this changed in 1901, when King Camp Gillette came along with his swanky new double-edged safety razor and revolutionised the shaving industry forever!

Right?

Not really.

The Origins of Single-Edge Safety Razors

Yes, Gillette’s safety razor was an innovation, yes, it made shaving cheaper, faster and safer…but it isn’t the game-changer that everybody seems to think that it is – mainly because Gillette was not the first person to invent a safety razor!

Safety razors date all the way back to the last quarter of the 19th century when inventors and manufacturers, spurred on by the Industrial Revolution, attempted to improve on the effectiveness and the ease-of-use of the razors then in use – that is to say – straight razors!

To this end, there were actually loads of companies in the late 1800s and early 1900s all trying to find a system whereby a safer razor could be sold to the public, which was easier to use than the traditional straight-edge, which took skill, time and patience to both use, master, and maintain. Companies like GEM, EverReady, Valet-Autostrop, STAR, and Wilkinson Sword, were all on the bandwagon!

In fact, the very notion of marketing a new device as a “safety” razor wasn’t even Gillette’s idea! Nope – the Kampfe Brothers beat him to it by twenty years! When they launched their new “STAR” Lather-Catcher in 1880, it was the first safety razor! No, it wasn’t the first to be invented, but it was literally the first safety razor in the sense that Kampfe Bros. was the first company to use the term “Safety Razor” in their very aggressive advertising. The idea caught on, and soon, loads of other manufacturers were all trying to jump on this new bandwagon of selling “safety” razors.

These early versions of safety razors were about as different from modern double-edged razors, and modern cartridge-razors as it’s possible to be. For one thing – the blades were not disposable! Nope – the whole idea was that once the blades were dull, you’d sharpen them up again like any other razor or knife or pair of scissors – and then you’d give them a thorough stropping with a piece of leather, and put the same blades back into service. In an era when money could be tight and people wanted as much value out of their products as possible, this was an attractive, and cost-saving feature.

These razors were what’s known today as “single-edge” or “S.E.” razors, because only one side of the blade was sharpened. They were basically modified straight razors, with the blade cut into chunks, fitted inside a protective steel cage or guard, and then affixed to a handle or grip – the same as just about any other safety razor today, except for the shape, fit and finish.

Wilkinson Sword Single-Edge Safety Razors

Wilkinson Sword is one of the most famous cutlery companies in the world, founded by famed London gunsmith Henry Nock in 1772. As the name suggests, the company originally made…swords! When the demand for swords started to fall away however, after the American Revolution, French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars of the 1770s, 80s, 90s, and early 1800s, the company had to find something else to make, and they turned from edged weapons to edged tools.

While the Wilkinson company made loads of things – rifles, guns, bayonets, swords, and even motorcycles during WWI – they became famous for razors in the late 1800s and early 1900s, shortly after the company was officially named “Wilkinson Sword”, in 1891. Along with companies like Kampfe Bros., GEM, and Valet-Autostrop, Wilkinson Sword became one of the most famous manufacturers of razors in the world, and they started cranking them out in earnest in the 1910s and 20s.

Wilkinson Sword safety razors made in the early 1900s were all of the single-edged variety, with removable hollow-ground blades designed to be reused and re-sharpened over and over again. Sets came in handsome stained wood, or leather-covered boxes, with a little rack to hold the blades, and a cradle to hold the razor and strop. The company gave the sets attractive, classy-sounding names like “Empire” and “Pall Mall” to appeal to customers aspiring to be seen owning and using the very latest in personal grooming devices.
In the 1930s, these sets started becoming more simplified. The wooden boxes with their metal fittings or leather exteriors were replaced with simpler steel boxes, nickel-plated, and adorned with more hip, Art Deco-style designs.

In our increasingly waste-conscious world, people have started rejecting throwaway cartridge razors, and some are even rejecting the less-wasteful, but still disposable double-edged razors – the kind introduced by King C. Gillette at the turn of the last century. There’s a growing interest, in the 21st century, in using vintage razors such as the classical cutthroat straight-edge, and in single-edged safety razors with reusable blades.

So, how exactly do you use them? Where do you get them? What kinds are there?

One of the most easily accessible manufacturers of these types of vintage, single-edge razors are those made by Wilkinson Sword! I purchased a set on eBay, and spent the last few days restoring it to as close to its original condition as I could reasonably manage. So, what exactly needed doing?

Restoring the Razor Set

The good thing about these sets is that they’re very over-engineered. The metalware is typically brass, heavily plated in nickel for extra protection, and the blades are carefully protected in their own little racks inside the storage case.

So what’s the biggest issue with these sets?

Perhaps unsurprisingly – water damage. They’re razors, they’re used in wet, damp environments, after all, and water-damage (specifically rust) is their greatest enemy.

The set I bought was a bit battered, but in usable condition, barring rust, to greater or lesser degrees, on almost every single one of the seven blades which made up the kit’s seven-day set. The first thing to do was to take everything out of the metal case, blow it out, dust it and clean it.

Once that was done, I was able to more closely examine the blades, which had obviously been used rough and put away wet – literally. To de-rust the blades meant having to slide them out of their protective brackets, the little metal sleeves which allow the blades to be mounted inside the razor head. In some cases, this was pretty easy. In others, the blades had to be tapped loose with a hammer! In some instances this wasn’t too difficult, in others, the blades required real persuasion.

When metal rusts, it expands, and that causes the friction which jammed the blades into their mounting brackets. Liberal use of WD-40 and a lot of firm but determined hammer-tapping loosened the really stiff blades, however, and meant that I could get on with the main job:

Cleaning the mounting brackets, and de-rusting the blades. Fortunately, the brackets are, like the razor, heavily plated in nickel, so there’s no rust or corrosion to be found there – just a lot of dust and gunk, easily removed with cotton-buds.

De-rusting the blades required treatment with an acidic de-rusting solution, and then polishing with 0000-grade steel wool to remove the final encrustations back down to bare steel. Removing the water-marks on the blades would be nigh impossible (and even if I did remove them, they’d only come back after more contact with water), so I left them as they were. I did however, remove all the rust and smooth off the steel, and then sharpened and stropped the blades (again, with them removed from their mounting brackets) before putting them all back together and back into the razor case.

The next thing to do was to attend to the razor itself. It has a number of moving parts, such as the comb, the bar that holds the razor-blades, the spring-loaded teeth which hold the blades in place when the razor is in use, and the swivel-knob at the base of the handle for releasing or tightening up the razor-head for when you want to insert or remove a blade. Obviously, when you’re dealing with something that’s literally razor sharp, you don’t want any sort of stiffness and jerky components!

Replacing the old Strop

One feature of these old single-edged razor kits which is pretty nifty is that they almost all came with some type of automatic stropping device, to smooth off the blades and realign the edges between shaves. You can see this in the STAR razors, the Wilkinson Sword razors, the Rolls Razors, and – pretty obviously – in the Valet Autostrop razors. The basic premise was that you fed the strop through the razor (or put the blade into a specially-made stropping handle) and ran the blade back and forth across the strop.

The strops were made of leather. This means that they don’t always last. They dry, they crack, they break, or they wear out from overuse – so replacing them, if they can’t be revived, is rather important.

This is easily done with a piece of leather of the right thickness, length, and finish. The leather must be smooth, soft, and thin. In the case of the Wilkinson Sword razors, the leather must be thin enough to fit into the gap in the razor-head through which the strop is designed to run. Then it’s simply a matter of finding a way to mount one end of the strop to the wall, and being able to feed the other end through the razor. The leather has to be long enough to strop the razor effectively – at least 12 inches long.

How Does this Set Work?

It’s pretty simple, really.

You sharpen the blades on sharpening stones of appropriate grits, until they’re literally razor sharp. Then, you strop them on a strop.

Make sure that you remove the blades from their brackets before sharpening, to prevent damage, and to put them back into their brackets when stropping, so that they’re easier to hold. You can either use the automatic-stropping system that comes with the razor, or if one doesn’t exist, because the original strop is unusable or missing (or you haven’t had the opportunity to make a new strop, which is easily done with enough of the right leather), then you can use an ordinary straight razor strop. It’s not ideal, because these small blades can be fiddly to hold, but it does work.

If you do have a compatible strop for the razor, then you mount one end of the strop to the wall, and feed the other side through the razor where it says “INSERT STROP THIS SIDE”. With a firm grip on the razor, and keeping the strop straight and level, slide the razor back and forth across the stop – the faster, the better.

The faster you do it, the faster the gears on the razor engage with the strop, causing the blade to flop over to the correct side for each pass along the strop. Thorough stropping typically involves a couple of dozen passes to ensure complete coverage of the blade. It’s important to keep the strop level so that the blade connects with the leather, and it’s equally important to keep the strop tight, so that the blade doesn’t slice up the leather due to improper angle between the blade and strop.

When you’re done, you simply slide the razor off the strop, and now you’re ready to lock the blade into the razor, and commence shaving.

If you’ve used the razor method of stropping, then you can ignore most of what comes next. If you had to strop the blade by hand, then you will need to read what comes next, because that’s how to put the blade into the razor, ready for shaving…

This is done by unscrewing the knob at the base of the razor, so that you loosen up the razor head. You swivel the mounting bar that holds the blade upwards, and slot the blade (in its mounting bracket) onto the bar at right-angles to it, so that the knob on the bar fits into the hole in the bracket. Then you twist sideways, and this locks the blade into place.

Flip the blade down the correct way (pointing towards the adjustable comb feature at the front of the razor) and hold it in place by pressing the adjustment-knob at the back of the razor head. This slides out the comb, which locks the blade in place with two little teeth, stopping it from flopping around everywhere. Finally, adjust the razor head and tighten up the knob in the handle to hold everything in place.

You’re now ready to shave!

To remove the blade, you simply release the knob in the handle, press the adjustment-knob at the back of the razor head to unlock the blade, and twist it off the mounting bar. Easy! Just make sure that in all these operations, you don’t cut yourself on the blade.

In this last image here, you can see the razor with the blade correctly inserted, with the two prongs or teeth holding the blade down, ready to shave. As you shave, the stubble and soap builds up under the blade, between the edge, and the teeth or ridges on the comb. You can remove it all easily when the time comes to remove the blade after use.

Looking After the Razor Set

Looking after a Wilkinson Sword or similarly-styled single-edged safety-razor set is much like looking after a set of straight razors, and the same rules apply.

The blades should be sharpened thoroughly, stropped generously, and kept DRY when they’re not in use. These old blades are made of carbon steel, and as such, they can rust extremely easily. If you expect your set to last, the blades must be kept dry between uses, and any blades used must be cleaned and dried after shaving, before they’re put away. Any damp at all will cause the blades to start growing rust. In fact this was such a problem with early razors that Wilkinson Sword was one of the first companies in the world to start selling stainless steel razor blades in the 1960s!

Closing Remarks…

So – what are my thoughts on this? Are these old SE razors effective? Do they shave?

Yes they do. They take a bit of getting used to, but having used my Wilkinson Sword set, I can assure you, they most definitely do shave, and they do it passably well. Their bulk may make them tricky to handle in the beginning, but I’m sure with practice, you could get quite good at it.

Are they worth buying and using as everyday shavers?

Yes, if you don’t mind the extra maintenance, and the potentially high costs of purchase and possible need for restorations.

What should I check for when buying such a set?

Quite a lot, actually. Make sure that the set is complete, that the blades are in usable (or at least, restorable) condition, that the razor is functional and free from cracks or other damage, and that they can be cleaned thoroughly before use. As for yourself, make sure that you know how to properly sharpen a razor blade before using it. Shaving with a blunt razor is a recipe for disaster, so it’s better to over-sharpen a razor than it is to try and cut corners with it, and make sure you strop the blades thoroughly before use.