Quest for less technology

[Guido75]

Now something struck me as well and that is that with Z scores we might be able to compare between ourselves better even if we are using differing scales since it is based on means and std dev. It resets the scale so to speak. As long as we are fairly consistent with ourself we might be able to compare scores between people.

You are heading in the right direction there Dr Watson.

 

[Pinto90]

Not too much movement on anything significant on the blade front this past month. The Derby Premium, which I have used pretty much throughout April has solidified it's 3rd place in the rankings. Normally once you use a blade across more and more razors it will sink a bit in the rankings, but the Derby Premium has really not. It has been a solid blade for me and I will finish up the last blade in my tuck in about a week and a half. One a bit surprising blade is the Parker Premium. Now this is a blade that came with the PIF I won of the Parker SoloEdge razor. It is a 100 pack of the half DE Parker Premium blades and the first one I tried was really good. We will see if that continues or not.
View attachment 1838892

The Dorco Titan is currently my favorite but GSB might be.
I note that you currently like the Derby blades, in second and third place.
The Parker blade is always produced by the Turkish Derby company.

 

[blethenstrom]

You are heading in the right direction there Dr Watson.

Here are a few of my last shave log entries with added Z score for the "shave quality". I performed a mean over all my 1, 2, 2.5, 3 and 4 pass shaves and also did the same for std dev. then I calculated the Z score for each individual shave using those numbers.

 

[blethenstrom]

The Dorco Titan is currently my favorite but GSB might be.
I note that you currently like the Derby blades, in second and third place.
The Parker blade is always produced by the Turkish Derby company.

Actually we had a discussion on this in my journal a while back and actually my half blade Parker Premium blades are made in......Egypt according to the box. It seems like the regular DE blades from Parker is from most likely Derby like you said, but I think the half Parker Premium blades are made by Lord in Egypt. Why that would be the case I have no idea.

I am a fan of Lord, Dorco's and Derby (even the Derby Extra works well for me). I have not found many blades that I cannot use.

 

[Pinto90]

Okay! I didn't know that Parker half blades unlike whole blades for DE were made in Egypt.
Good find,it is useful for me to know that.

I have not found many blades that I cannot use.

Not true,you certainly found one! It's called GSB

 

[blethenstrom]

Okay! I didn't know that Parker half blades unlike whole blades for DE were made in Egypt.
Good find,it is useful for me to know that.


Not true,you certainly found one! It's called GSB

Oh you are catching very quickly my good man. I am sure I could physically use them and get great shaves from them, but I just choose not to use them.

 

[blethenstrom]

I am tracking a few more items this year, including shave rating. I should have some better stats for my year end review. I don't do it monthly as I find the sample size too small to be meaningful for me.

Well the sample size will increase each time you shave.

 

[thombrogan]

Parker Injector blades are made in the USA.

 

[cajunrph]

Parker Injector blades are made in the USA.

Boris razor was the half-blade jobie, if that makes any difference.

 

[blethenstrom]

Boris razor was the half-blade jobie, if that makes any difference.

It sure was. Parker SoloEdge to be exact. I bet Parker is just contracting whoever for their blades.

 

[Pinto90]

In fact, the Parker Soloedge razor accepts pre-cut half-blades or split double-edged blades, not injector blades.
It somewhat surprises me that Parker has the whole double-edged blades manufactured by Derby in Turkey and the half-blades by Lord in Egypt.
One cannot understand why.

Perhaps the Parker company is planning soon to move production of the whole double-edged blades to Egypt as well?
Since Parker started selling double-edged blades that I remember they have always been produced in Turkey ,from the very beginning.

 

[blethenstrom]

In fact, the Parker Soloedge razor accepts pre-cut half-blades or split double-edged blades, not injector blades.
It somewhat surprises me that Parker has the whole double-edged blades manufactured by Derby in Turkey and the half-blades by Lord in Egypt.
One cannot understand why.

Perhaps the Parker company is planning soon to move production of the whole double-edged blades to Egypt as well?
Since Parker started selling double-edged blades that I remember they have always been produced in Turkey ,from the very beginning.

It is hard to understand why and maybe they contract someone for a few years and then renegotiate contracts and maybe the lot goes to someone else. Who knows...

 

[Balin]

Well the sample size will increase each time you shave.

I'm sort of waiting until year end so I can evaluate what is my most used gear. So I know what I can purge at some point.

 

[thombrogan]

Boris razor was the half-blade jobie, if that makes any difference.

My pointless input was regarding country of origin for blades with the Parker name. Egypt, Türkiye, and ‘Merica (#1! #1!)

 

[Umma2gumma]

The Dorco Titan is currently my favorite but GSB might be.
I note that you currently like the Derby blades, in second and third place.
The Parker blade is always produced by the Turkish Derby company.

They may be produced by the same company, but they are most certainly not the same blade.

I liked Parkers that came with my razors. I actually bought 100 Derby Premiums several years ago because they were rumored to be the same as Parkers (they were $6/100 back then, so paying for a sample to save a couple dollars didn't make sense). They were nothing like Parkers, somewhat less sharp and quite a bit less smooth. I still have about 90 of that 100 left.

 

[Pinto90]

They may be produced by the same company, but they are most certainly not the same blade.

I liked Parkers that came with my razors. I actually bought 100 Derby Premiums several years ago because they were rumored to be the same as Parkers (they were $6/100 back then, so paying for a sample to save a couple dollars didn't make sense). They were nothing like Parkers, somewhat less sharp and quite a bit less smooth. I still have about 90 of that 100 left.

I don't own Parker blades and have never tried them, so I wouldn't know if misinformation is sometimes circulating.
However, the manufacturer's website the material used is exactly the same with respect to all Derby blades.

They will probably change something slightly in the blade process between one blade and another i.e. it could also be our perception that leads us to notice differences when maybe the blade is exactly the same in different packaging or with a rebranding of the label.

I think even some Pakistani Treet blades only slightly change something in the metalwork to differentiate one blade from another. Hard to say.

In Italy there is an Italian company called Muster&Dikson that distributes and sells hairstylist and Esthetician,body care products also has platinum razor blades in its catalog.
It turns out they are manufactured by Treet ,in the Italian forum some find them more similar to the Treet Platinum, here I read some wrote similar to the Treet 7 Day.

It is nice to explore in the search for the blade,continuing to speculate and speculate about them,to discuss them freely.
The world of wet shaving is also beautiful for this.

 

[blethenstrom]

Morning shave - 5/2/24
Razor: RazoRock Mentor
Blade: Derby Premium (4/5) (4)
Soap: Palmolive Sensitive Shave Cream
Brush: Omega 81052 Banded Boar
Aftershave: Clubman Pinaud
Rating: 9.5/10, DFS+
Not as close as yesterday's shave, but I have not irritation either so I consider that a win. It was a very easy shave. I actually bowl lathered for the first time in a very long time and I still am bad at it. I might just do that for a bit to get better at it and to help break in my boar brush. It is a bit rough to face lather with. Very respectable shave.

This boar brush is still pretty prickly so I decided to bowl lather instead of face lather. I also went with the Palmolive Shave cream because I know how easy it lathers. It came together into a nice lather very quickly in my bowl, but I think I need to work at it a bit more, because I did not think the slickness was there that I am used to with my face lather. I probably did not work it enough nor had the right amount of water. Now all the did not stop me from having a great shave. It was a super simple shave and I coasted on autopilot throughout. Muscle memory and all was there and it made it very enjoyable.

I was thinking a bit about @Guido75's suggestion of a thread dedicated to statistics of our shaves and I think that is a great idea. Maybe it should even be a club/group thing. We could discuss different methods and record keeping. How much data to save and how to differently look at the data and hopefully glean some insights from the data. Maybe there is even ways we can find some way to compare data between people or aggregate data from multiple people.

Happy shaves everyone!

 

[Jay21]

I'm a stats nerd by trade. If you're not too serious about violating assumptions when performing stats, I can ram them through a fancy program once you decide on your data structure.

 

[Guido75]

I'm sort of waiting until year end so I can evaluate what is my most used gear. So I know what I can purge at some point.

Are we talking software only? Or specifically hardware ? Osyri might be jumping up and down when he reads this!

 

[blethenstrom]

I'm a stats nerd by trade. If you're not too serious about violating assumptions when performing stats, I can ram them through a fancy program once you decide on your data structure.

Maybe so. If we can do some data structure that we can agree on we can try that. That would be cool.