width of blade

[sea hag]

Long time lurker, first time poster. Lots of good info here. It was here that i decided to buy a merkur barberpole, and to get a sampler pack.

Anywhoo, does anybody know how wide (cutting edge to edge) a DE blade is supposed to be? I loaded an Astra platinum in my razor, and it looked like the blade stuck out further than most. (I've tried feathers, gilette vietnamese, merkur, israeli barber personna).

This got me thinking.... could the perfect blade/razor combo really be a factor of blade width and razor 'aggressiveness' ? the amount that the razor bends the blade would affect the exposed edge, too.

matthew

shaving for years, finally enjoying it

 

[Ski-Patroller]

If you compare them, I think you will find they are all the same. If you really want to know, I'll measure one.

 

[sea hag]

i have access to calipers and micrometers, the difficulty is measuring accurately one sharp edge to another. depending on razor geometry, i could see a width difference of even .015" making a difference in how the blade feels and shaves. do you have,, by chance, access to any optical measuring devices?

 

[Ski-Patroller]

I just have mics and digital calipers.

I just measured the width of three blades
Astra 0.863
Super Iridium 0.866
Feather 0.866

All were 0.004 thick.

If there is .003 variation in width between mfgs. there would still only be .0015 change in exposure.

No real problem to measure the width. I just put them down on a wood block that had a slot cut in it to accommodate the calipers. The blade stays flat and does not bow. If I get ambitious I might try some more. These were used blades from my blade safe.

 

[Alacrity59]

Probably the Astra is dried up and shrunk.

 

[sea hag]

as with most things, my thought was hardly unique.

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php?t=40491

but it's been a couple of years at least.

I'll have to measure what's in my sampler pack..

 

[Ski-Patroller]

I will measure a bunch of blades. I am curious how consistent they are within a particular blade.

I suggest that you not measure new blades. I can't think of anything worse than a hard steel caliper against a razor blade that I planned to use. I have lots of old blades in my blade bank that I can check. It might take a day or two.

MM or inches?

 

[talibeard]

The question came up a few times before. In general they are 22 mm wide with a maximum variation (including some vintage blades) of about 0.3 mm. But most blades stay within a + or - 0.05 mm of the 22 mm.

Whether this could make a noticable difference will depend a lot on your razor; in a very mild one it might mean the difference between usable and unusable while in a very aggressive razor you probably can't tell the difference at all.