It's for resharpening your double edge razor blades. Press the blade down in the ramp, and sweep it back and forth. It's claimed it will get you dozens of shaves from a single blade.
No moving parts, other than your finger and the blade. Could be dangerous. I like danger.
Yes, I saw one a long (like 40 years) ago. They work too.
ReplyDeleteI have heard that if you soak your razor in isopropyl alcohol between usage it will hold it's edge much longer. Never tried it myself. I can certainly imagine the alcohol eliminates rust/oxidation.
ReplyDeletegoetz
You can get the same effect (increasing blade life by sort-of honing) by using the inside of a straight walled water tumbler. Can get you an extra 3 or 4 shaves out of a dull safety razor blade. I learned about it in an old Heinlein book, "Job, a comedy of justice."
ReplyDeleteNearly shaved off my finger prints once doing it, and never did it again after almost shaving off my finger pad. Use at your own risk.
FormerFlyer.
Not only razor blades, in a pinch you can do this with a knife also.
DeleteInterestingly enough, there are a whole lot of different razor blade sharpening devices on eBay. I’m not sure whether that means razor blades are that much cheaper because of better manufacturing processes or whether we’re just so much richer we don’t care about the expense, but I suspect more of the latter.
ReplyDeleteBlades are actually pretty cheap. In fact, it's one of the arguments made for wet shaving - it's cheaper.
DeleteTrue, I should have specified that they are mainly old devices, presumably from the same time period as the one shown. My feeling is those devices wouldn’t have been made unless blades were perceived as relatively expensive back then.
DeleteThat's cool. Let us know how it works.
ReplyDeleteMy father used to use the inside of a coffee cup.
ReplyDeleteInteresting!
ReplyDeleteI've been toying with the idea of getting a Ken Onion blade sharpener for some time. This is a power tool-type gizmo that uses progressively finer grit sanding belts with a specialized fixed-angle setup that quickly gets knives super-sharp, I mean hair-splitting. A doctor friend has one. But there's an old boy in Texas who also makes leather strops for these things. I wonder if that would work for this (for sure it would work for the cut-throats). I like the old-fashioned glass hone, that's classy. Probably doesn't work all that well though, I'm guessing.
ReplyDeleteI have one made of stone that belonged to my paternal grandfather.
ReplyDeleteLove this and love your blog! Had to have one; found on ebay!
ReplyDelete