I have tried a lot of different types of blades and most of the commonly available ones. After a few years exploring, I made a confident decision about which blade to settle on - Astra SP. Since then, I have been buying other blades here and there, but buying Astras by the hundred.
When asked about about a blade choice, I encourage people to try Astras. They are, IMHO, the perfect balance between smooth and sharp compared to the other blade options. They are also near to the cheapest blade you can buy. Typically they cost under $20 delivered and can be had for half that price. As a bonus, they are in current production and can be found almost anywhere including through vendors or on the Bay. So you never have to search for them too much and don't have to worry that they will run out of stock. They are just about the perfect blade and I have loaded many a razor with Astras knowing that I can have full faith in my blade. In short, if you shaved with these and had a terrible shave, you are doing something wrong, forget YMMV.
Here's the thing. Even though I am slowly starting to use a straight more often, I still have about four DEs in my regular rotation. Then I also have few other DEs that see some use. I shave every day and only use a razor twice before switching it for another and loading a fresh blade, so I can easily use 10-15 different DEs in a given month. This evening I decided to clean and polish 16 razors (or more, welcome to RAD, it's a disease...). Every one of those razors had four damn globs of wax caked on to them.
So that makes 64 #%&!#$@ gobs of wax that I had to polish away tonight
Seriously. The wax spots are a nuisance from shave to shave on a single razor, but seeing them caked on to all those razors just made me realize how annoying the glue actually is. There are plenty of other good competing blades out there, so I am not sure what my new go-to blade will be, but I know I am not cleaning gobs of glue in bulk again! Am I the only one who gets annoyed by this useless glue?
When asked about about a blade choice, I encourage people to try Astras. They are, IMHO, the perfect balance between smooth and sharp compared to the other blade options. They are also near to the cheapest blade you can buy. Typically they cost under $20 delivered and can be had for half that price. As a bonus, they are in current production and can be found almost anywhere including through vendors or on the Bay. So you never have to search for them too much and don't have to worry that they will run out of stock. They are just about the perfect blade and I have loaded many a razor with Astras knowing that I can have full faith in my blade. In short, if you shaved with these and had a terrible shave, you are doing something wrong, forget YMMV.
Here's the thing. Even though I am slowly starting to use a straight more often, I still have about four DEs in my regular rotation. Then I also have few other DEs that see some use. I shave every day and only use a razor twice before switching it for another and loading a fresh blade, so I can easily use 10-15 different DEs in a given month. This evening I decided to clean and polish 16 razors (or more, welcome to RAD, it's a disease...). Every one of those razors had four damn globs of wax caked on to them.
So that makes 64 #%&!#$@ gobs of wax that I had to polish away tonight
Seriously. The wax spots are a nuisance from shave to shave on a single razor, but seeing them caked on to all those razors just made me realize how annoying the glue actually is. There are plenty of other good competing blades out there, so I am not sure what my new go-to blade will be, but I know I am not cleaning gobs of glue in bulk again! Am I the only one who gets annoyed by this useless glue?
