Blade coatings to prevent corrosion and enhance shave

[BigSpender]

Do most/all razor blades have a coating to prevent corrosion prior to use?

That's been my assumption. Conditions for blades en route to your razor can be brutal, considering they must endure everything from months of Indian monsoon, blazing Arabian heat, Asian smog, and Amazon rainforest humidity, not to mention Amazon warehouses.

At some point, I think the blades may have had a thin coating of paraffin, based on my vague recollections. For awhile now some blades have been coated with PTFE, at least on the edges. Some seem to have a plastic/polymer coating on the whole blade, judging from my difficulty getting a permanent marker to write permanently on them. Do any still use paraffin (perhaps the cheap Indian blades)?

Did old, vintage blades have a protective coating? If so, to what extent do they preserve them in usable condition? How far back?

Do single edge blades, particularly the ones with a spine - boxcutter form, have a protective coating?

Perhaps the platinum or chrome sputtering makes an additional layer of protection unnecessary?

Some coatings, of course, may enhance the shaving experience. I wonder what other coatings there are?

The Laser Ultra triple coated blades and nice and smooth, though they only last a few shaves. They don't say what the coatings are, and given the price, I suspect it does not include platinum or even chrome. So, there's 1) PTFE (the generic name for Teflon, a trademark of DuPont), and there's 2 _____, and 3 ______?

BTW, other coatings I have seen mentioned include "ceramic" and titanium, which sometimes seems to be titanium nitride, a form of ceramic.

I see members sometimes suggesting that poor warehouse storage conditions may have resulted in name brand blades shaving very badly, vs. being counterfeit. I wonder if that can really occur, presuming manufacturers use a protective coating? Nevertheless, a lack of coating might affect one's choice of where to buy blades from.

Your thoughts and expertise welcome!

 

[Butch Waxx]

A marvelous dissertation well deserving of a doctorate!!!!!

 

[RayClem]

Gillette developed the process for coating razor blades in the late 1950s. They introduced the Super Blue blade which was the first coated carbon steel blade. The coating was organic silicon based. Due to the coating, it was one of the best blades available and captured a significant share of the market.

Competitors had to come up with a way to compete with Gillette. They developed coated stainless steel blades. Since Gillette held the patent for the process of applying coating to razor blades, Gillette sued these competitors and won. The competitors had to pay a royalty for use of the coating process until the patent expired.

Initially, Gillette believed that the Super Blue blades would hold their own against the stainless competition, so they were slow to introduce their own stainless blades. However, the competing stainless blades quickly gained acceptance in the market and the Gillette market share dropped. At that point, Gillette introduced their own stainless blades.

The first PTFE coated blades were introduced by Gillette in 1965. They were called Super Stainless. The process required to bake the PTFE onto the edge of the blade weakened the steel. Gillette solved that problem by using coatings composed of Platinum, Chromium, Tungsten, Iridium, and Titanium alloys. However, the alloy coated blades still use PTFE coatings.