Mach 3 blades

[julian0808]

A colleague of mine recently returned from the States, I believe it was San Francisco area. Whilst there, he bought a bulk deal on Mach 3 blades. He insisted, no, begged me to try them as they were in his words, sharper than his Global chefs knife. As Global make some brutally sharp knives for chefs I figured give it a try and true enough,it was sharp, very sharp. I'm a DE razor guy and have been for the past 3-4 years but thus got me thinking that there must be different sharpness in blades for the US and blades for 'over here' meaning China.
Whilst I'm not about to return to cartridge razors the disparity between the sharpness of blades has got me thinking ?

 

[mblakele]

What DE blades do you normally use?

From China I have tried the Gillette Super Thin (by Flying Eagle?) and the Cloud blades. Both were acceptable, but not as sharp nor as long-lived as my top tier blades.

Gillette has great blade technology, however they package it. Some of the St Petersburg and India DE blades are very good by any measure. But they probably choose to put their best work into the higher-margin cartridges. Why use the best steel and DLC coatings to make a 20-cent blade?

This diagram comes from a Gillette whitepaper and describes the Fusion cartridge blades. There was a rumor about a year ago to the effect that Mach3 now uses similar technology.

 

[julian0808]

My normal blade is a Gilette yellow, I will also use a Gilette blue. I recently bought 200 Polsilvers and have been equally impressed, that being said I have been caught short a couple times in places where I have been sent on secondment. Chongqing in the hinterlands of china and xian. I managed to find some shanghai blades, not bad actually but a combination of hard water, living next to a dusty hotel construction site and water that wasn't much above tepid didn't make it an enjoyable shave.

your comments about Gilette putting their technology into higher end blades makes sound sense from a business perspective.

 

[mblakele]

The Gillette Yellow blades are sharp enough for me, but not as durable (5 shaves) as the Silver Blue (7) or the old Super Iridium (10-12). Those counts are all with jeans-stropping, which basically doubles the life of high-quality blades for me. Without it I tend to get 2-5 shaves from any blade.

Anyway good news is that the patents on the DLC coating have expired, or will expire soon: http://www.google.com/patents/US5142785 and http://www.google.com/patents/US5295305. That latter patent might still be valid until March 2014: it was filed in 1994, the year the rules last changed, so I am not sure which rules apply. Either way, we might start to see that technology in DE blades - if manufacturers are willing to make the investment.