Blade consistency from pack to pack

[EmptyB]

I've seen some posts about people getting a "bad" blade every now and then in a pack of five or ten, and I understand how that can happen. Has anyone experienced an entire pack of "bad" blades that seem to perform much worse than expected or much worse than other packs of that same blade? I'm asking because I went through a pack of Bic Chrome Platinums and every blade was a poor performer (not very sharp compared to other brands, very rough, lots of nicks and weepers). Perhaps the Bics just don't work for me, but I'm wondering whether I may have received a bad lot of blades this time.

What do you think? Is there such a thing as pack-to-pack variation of this type?

 

[TMH478]

Thankfully, not as of yet. Most of the defunct blades that I have run into were Derbys.

 

[zachster]

I've had the same problem with Bic blades, with separate 5 packs purchased months apart, and came to the conclusion they just don't work for me. I also had one 5 pack of Derby blades that I threw out after really crappy shaves with the first three -- but it was part of a 100 pack and I didn't have a similar problem again, so there's really no rhyme or reason to it...

 

[EmptyB]

I should add that I'm using a Muhle R89 razor, and that I've tried the following blades (some perform better than others for me, but none of them were consistently bad like the pack of Bics): Astra Platinum; Iridium Super; Derby; Shark Chrome; 7 O'clock yellow; and Sharp.

Cheers.

 

[mblakele]

That sounds more like the blade simply doesn't work for you. I wasn't fond of the BICs either, although some folks do like them.

 

[EmptyB]

Thanks everyone. I'll scratch Bics off my "buy again" list.

 

[Obi Wan]

I had bad results from the first 2 blades from a green pack of horizontal derbys and decided that the blades just don't work for me, rather then it being a bad batch.

 

[El Judio Bravo]

In general I see not too many gripes about QC regardless of the brand or country of manufacture. Variation over time with a given brand is a guarantor of that brand being rejected by us, the consumers.

Derby is plainly not for every shaver. I see them blessed and cursed pretty much equally on average. And I have to say that more than a few times, I've read complaints about Derby's QC. Not my problem; gave them a fair trial, and didn't care for them even though they were of uniform manufacture.

No one gets everything right 100% of the time. And as always, you pays your money and takes your chances. I never thought I'd end up so pleased with products made in Egypt or Russia. YMMV.

 

[Bill Christman]

From a QC standpoint, maybe 1 in a pack but have never seen a whole pack bad in my experience. Been in Manufacturing for over 20 years and in plants they do spot checks all the time and they test as they come off the conveyors or test bins. Whole packs being bad? Would have to say the blade doesn't agree with you or really bad luck/bad batch from plant which would be very rare. YMMV definitely since nothing is 100%, 100% of the time.

 

[MisfitWy23]

From a QC standpoint, maybe 1 in a pack but have never seen a whole pack bad in my experience. Been in Manufacturing for over 20 years and in plants they do spot checks all the time and they test as they come off the conveyors or test bins. Whole packs being bad? Would have to say the blade doesn't agree with you or really bad luck/bad batch from plant which would be very rare. YMMV definitely since nothing is 100%, 100% of the time.

From a non-QC standpoint, I guess, it seems to me that there would more likely be whole packs that are bad because of the way they are made; long strips of steel that go through the machines hundreds at a time. It doesn't seem likely that just one or two in the middle would be bad if the machining was off.

 

[Z blade]

The only bad blade I have experienced from pack to pack is when it wasn't a pack of Feather blades. Trying all those samples of basically "bad" blades that I really didn't ever want to use on my face again. Some were ok, but the Feathers have been the sharpest and smoothest.

I haven't noticed any inconsistencies in any Feather or even Wilkinson Sword packs, but did with the cheap and inexpensive blades. it was probably just the quality though.