Razors, Blades

A razor is a bladed tool primarily used in shaving on the body to remove unwanted hair. more...

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Early razors

Razors have been identified from many Bronze Age cultures. These were made of bronze or obsidian and were generally oval in shape, with a small tang protruding from one of the short ends.

Straight razors

Straight razors with open steel blades were the most commonly used razors before the 20th century. However, they are now chiefly used by barbers.

Straight razors consist of a blade sharpened on one edge. The blade can be made of either high-carbon steel, which is slow to hone and strop but dulls more slowly, or stainless steel, which hones and strops quickly and resists rusting, but requires more frequent sharpening. At present, stainless-steel razors are easy to find but expensive; carbon-steel razors are even more expensive and difficult to find though they are available from several cutlery companies, notably older German firms.

The blade rotates on a pin through its tang between two protective pieces called scales: when folded into the scales, the blade is protected from accidental damage, and the user is protected from accidental injury. Handle scales are made of various materials, including mother-of-pearl, celluloid, bone, plastic and wood. They were once made of ivory, but this has been discontinued, though fossil ivory is still used occasionally.

Safety razors

The first safety razor, a razor where the skin is protected from all but the very edge of the blade, was invented in the late 18th Century by a Frenchman, Jean-Jacques Perret, who was inspired by the joiner's plane. Marketed as "the best available shaving method on the market that won’t cut a user, like straight steel razors."

The first American safety razor was marketed in 1875 by the Kampfe Brothers. In 1901, the American inventor King Camp Gillette, with the assistance of William Nickerson, invented a safety razor with disposable blades. Gillette realized that a profit could be made by selling a razor with inexpensive disposable blades. This has been called the Razor and blades business model, or a "loss leader", and has become a very common practice for a wide variety of products.

There are also safety razors that are made of inexpensive materials that are meant to be wholly disposable.

Read more at Wikipedia.org