I recently acquired three of these Burham Safety Razors in new-in-box condition, and I wanted to share what little I've been able to find about these oddball razors. There doesn't seem to be much information online, and no information on Reddit, so here you are.

It appears that these razors were first produced in 1908, with early models sporting a stamped "Patent Applied For" as the patent had not yet been granted; Later models sport the patent date of July 6 1909. They were very affordable razors, with the most basic offering being at the 25*¢* price point, and they were frequently given away for free to bolster the customer base for blades and/or to advertise other products. I've also seen these razors rebranded as the "Morley Safety Razor". I do not know when production ceased on these razors, but the wide variety of packaging and the fact that later packaging advertises blades as 15*¢* for 3 blades instead of the earlier 10*¢* implies to me that they were in production for a decent while. I've seen a newsprint advertisement for these razors dated September 30 1915 online, although that ad may have just been a retailer attempting to liquidate old stock.

I've seen four distinct versions of this razor, each in a variety of different packages/cases:

* "Patent Applied For", stamped steel "Barber Pole" handle, open comb
* Patent date, handle with full-length coarse knurling, open comb
* Patent date, handle with three lengths of fine knurling, closed comb. I've seen a gold-plated example of this version, as well.
* Same as previous but the retaining spring is lacking the "BURHAM" stamping. My razors are all of this pattern.

All of them take a single-edge blade that I \*believe\* is identical in dimensions to the Valet Auto-Strop / Feather FHS / OneBlade blades, but without any cutouts. See pic 4 for it side-by-side with Gem blades, both with and without the spine. Just slide the blade in/out the front of the razor head.

The razor is very light, and the blade is fairly exposed. I don't typically like to shave with old stock blades, but given the fantastic condition of these blades, I gave it a go. The half-pass I did with the original Burham blade yielded a close and fairly comfortable shave, albeit with a lot of blade feel. The Gem blade (with spine), being slightly longer than the Burham blade, had even more blade feel, but it didn't irritate my skin as much as I had expected - perhaps due to the razor's light weight? The de-spined Gem blade was too short, and I wasn't able to get a close shave with it; perhaps it would work better with the open-comb varieties? In all three cases, it was a little bit awkward finding the right angle for the razor, as the spring retainer's height forces you to hold the blade at a fairly high angle relative to your face (for a single-edge razor, at least).

There is one thing in particular to look out for on these razors (or, at least, it was an issue on all of my examples): The two outermost teeth of the guard sit slightly higher than the others, and as a result the ends of the blade tend to bow upwards slightly (see the last photo for an example), and the corners can scratch you. If you pick up one of these razors, give the guard a thorough inspection, and carefully bend it flat. Once you do this, you should have pleasant shaves! 

The Burham Safety Razor