Thread: Curley's IDEAL Safely Razor

I thought the cleverness of this razor was pretty interesting in how it was designed and functions.
I did break it down and clean it up so if a Mod feels this should be in the Restoration forum please move it. But I thought seeing all the pieces would help explain just what it does a bit more clearly.
The blade guard can be used on either side. To get it to swing over there is a catch which pivots off the hinge pin. It's released by pressing up on the tail and it hinges , along with the thumbnotch, out of the way of the blade guard.
Once it's released you swing the guard to either side, press on the tumbnotch snapping this piece back in place and it locks the guard in place.
The blade, which is just a flat piece of steel can be removed. At the heel end of the blade there is a tiny hinged locking mechanism which can swing out of the way, drive the blade back a bit and it will release.
The blade guard can be adjusted relative to the edge by sliding the guard off the blade and turning a small barrel fitted to the end to make your adjustments.
The guard can also be left off to use it as a conventional frameback,, or hone the blade should you not fit in a replacement.
I didn't drive the blade out , out of fear of damaging it and not being able to find a replacement for it.
I just couldn't leave it alone seeing the rust on the guard locking mechanism so i did a gentle cleaning to remove the rust but didn't push i to far because I didn't want to remove the patent dates located along the spine.
The patent dates read, Sept 21 1886,,,, March 5th 1889,,,and June 12 1900. I know this doesn't relate to the date of the razor but I like seeing them on here just the same.
The original pin on the hinge only was Nickel with tiny washers as is commonly seen. I made very small SS washers to duplicate it and used a Nickel pin to duplicate the look. I also took out the scratches on the scales.
Hope you enjoy it.
I've been told they show up on eBay. I don't go there so this was new to me.

A few more detail shots showing the blade locking mechanism. The sequence of flipping the blade guard over, the blade guard removed for honing or use as a frameback and its original box.

I bet that's a lot better weighted than the Zepp, too.

The old Sheffield blades are the ones that catch my heart like a bucket of fish hooks, but I cannot help grinning every time I see how these turn-of-the-century guys solved problems. There's something really appealing about that era of mechanical engineering.

Absolutely, that's the thing that gets me. The pieces and contraptions though that are really mind boggling are the number of devices that were made to hone DE blades. Now there is a part of my collection that makes me just go " Are you kidding me?". Not at the engineering but the clever ways of solving problems they came up with. And watching them work. Oh many are they just too much. Everything from ones that look like fishing reels, to a CD player looking thing, and one looks like a torture rack that does two blades at a time. Another not much bigger than a match book that you pull a string back and forth and it makes the blade wiggle between hones.
Too much.

Pulling an all-nighter are we? Nice clean-up, as always.

It's what you do when you don't sleep much. I actually did 3 and got 2 more besides you know who's blade ready for Gold.

That is crazy. I worked 2 hours on DD#6 tonight and all I got done was unpinning and sanding up to 600 grit.

Interesting contraption of a razor, so many moving parts on there. The one pictured in the wiki looks nos Curley "Ideal Safety Razor" 6/8 - Straight Razor Place Wiki

Found a couple cool advertisement.

Thanks! This off beat stuff is too cool. And the ads . Neat.

Thanks for the photos of the entire razor and how it can work. This is a case of a photo being worth more than 10K words.
Very nice clean-up and renewal.
~Richard