What Gillette Blade Is This? It Butchered My Face.

[BayRhum]

A very kind & generous Badger and Blade member gave me some extra assorted blades in a trade (this board is great). One of them is the below. Unfortunately, it gave a horrible shave (Fatip razor). Tons of irritation. Is this an old NOS blade or? Seems to be sooooo many Gillette blades out there. This one is not familiar to me.

 

[ArNav]

Never seen anything like this. Maybe a Chinese fake?

 

[pdxshaver]

Looks similar to the "spoiler" packaging maybe a pre spoiler single nos ?

 

[BayRhum]

I noticed just now on another board they are indeed NOS blades from the UK.

 

[deoxy4]

Interesting, another example of YMMV. These are highly sought after blades by vintage blade shavers. I had 5 of these blades and thought they were very good. They are relatively hard to find and when you can find them generally cost $1 per blade.

 

[blzrfn]

Try them in a less aggressive razor and see if your results improve.

 

[BayRhum]

too late, already binned them . . .

 

[The Dean]

too late, already binned them . . .

Them? Did you toss out unused blades?

Just a couple thoughts for the next time a blade doesn't make the grade: Hang on to them and try them sometime down the road and/or in a different razor. The forum is littered with stories of guys who hated a blade initially and later on came to love it. Or, save them for a throw-in for a sale, or PIF. Better another guy gets to try them than to simply toss them. IMO, anyway.

 

[deafficianado]

I received 4 of those blades with a purchase I've made a while back. I loved it!!! I still have one left to use for some unknown celebration event.

 

[mastershake]

wow would have loved to try those out...

 

[zygalski]

A very kind & generous Badger and Blade member gave me some extra assorted blades in a trade (this board is great). One of them is the below. Unfortunately, it gave a horrible shave (Fatip razor). Tons of irritation. Is this an old NOS blade or? Seems to be sooooo many Gillette blades out there. This one is not familiar to me.

View attachment 378858

Try some Gillette 7 O'Clock (Indian) Blacks.
Amazing blade. So sharp & smooth!

 

[mastershake]

imo blacks are not my favorite. for me its silver blue or yellow's. i did not find the blacks anything super special

 

[BayRhum]

I'm not a big fan ob the 7 o'clock blacks. Now the Czech-made 7 o'clock blues are a very good blade.

 

[haiti222]

Those are fairly rare and are from 1966-1970 or so. Note they have the Queen's Award for Industry printed on them. UK Platinums are very sought after. They were also grey market imported into the US and put in blister packs by K-mart as well. I agree that they were probably a bad match with such an aggressive razor, and would have been better in another blade. It is possible you got a bad blade as well. Although this was from a time period where there were few bad blades from the majors, remember that ALL of the initial stainless blades from 1962-63 had quality control problems with the exception of Wilkinson Sword, and bad blades are very common with the stainless blades from Personna/ASR, Schick, and Gillette (pre-Spoiler) of that time.

More Pride from the Queen's Award: http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/278594-Gillette-Queen-s-Award-to-Industry-Memoriable

 

[Early Morning]

ALL of the initial stainless blades from 1962-63 had quality control problems with the exception of Wilkinson Sword

That's because ...

“The Wilkinson Sword Blade--it’s Swedish chrome steel, heat tempered at 1976 degrees, polished 16 times, inspected 22 times, stropped with costly Swiss oxhide, until the blade’s edge is sharpened to seventeen millionths of an inch. So smooth, so flawless, so sharp--And, sensitive on your face [sic]. And, it stays sharp, shave after shave. Put a Sword in your razor, the Wilkinson Sword blade, finest shaving edge in the world."

[The end of the commercial ends with two swords clinging together]

I have never tried those English Platinum blades, but are they seriously better than Spoilers or Gillette Platinum-Plus? I mean, jeez, how good can it get?

 

[haiti222]

That's because ...

“The Wilkinson Sword Blade--it’s Swedish chrome steel, heat tempered at 1976 degrees, polished 16 times, inspected 22 times, stropped with costly Swiss oxhide, until the blade’s edge is sharpened to seventeen millionths of an inch. So smooth, so flawless, so sharp--And, sensitive on your face [sic]. And, it stays sharp, shave after shave. Put a Sword in your razor, the Wilkinson Sword blade, finest shaving edge in the world."

[The end of the commercial ends with two swords clinging together]

I have never tried those English Platinum blades, but are they seriously better than Spoilers or Gillette Platinum-Plus? I mean, jeez, how good can it get?

I bought a lot of odd lots of vintage blades about 4-5 years ago on ebay. There were three types of blades I can recall that were very scarce, and always had bidders who beat me out for every lot that was available. Type one was the circa 1990 Gillettes that were from France right after they stopped American DE production. Those blades used an all-plastic dispenser with 2 stickers on the front. Those are some of the best Gillette blades ever (see other thread right now about one variety of them). Second was the K-mart and Walgreens store brand DE's by ASR from the late 1960's. They were aggressive ASR blades (unlike their store brand a few years later). Also, K-mart was so big, they were perhaps able to get blades much like the aggressive Personna's of the day (right before the 74's). I bought some K-mart brand injectors from the late 80's that were actually made by Schick, not ASR. Kmart had that kind of clout. Finally, the UK Gillette Platinums went for big money. They were often the grey market imports from Kmart. They are more aggressive than the Spoiler or the US Platinum, or just about any U.S. made Gillette for that matter.