Razor Blade Test PIF -- Looking for testers

I first thank those here on B & B that have given me blades, soaps and even razors. It is time for me to give back. I therefore announce the Razor Blade Test PIF. I am looking to give two people each 14 blades -- two of seven different brands. The brands are listed below:

1. Treet Dura Sharp
2. Rapira
3. Zorrik
4. Astra Platinum
5. Astra Stainless
6. Racer
7. Derby

The rules are simple. The first two people to respond in the affirmative to this thread will receive the blades as long as they live in either the US (including Alaska or Hawaii) or Canada (which includes the higher cost territories such as Nunavut). The recipients will be asked to shave with at least one of the blades from each brand sent and post the results on this thread (good, bad or ugly) or the Blade Poll thread where I first announced that I was going to do this. Pictures are NOT required. As there are seven brands, that would entail at least seven posts. I apologize for having to limit the PIF to the US or Canada but postage for something like this to an outside country is very high (post to Nunavut is high enough at well over a dollar, post to - for example Singapore or Australia - is higher yet by at least three times). Respond quick to get the blades! I also thank the winners in advance for their cooperation.

I would love to test your blades.

Bill

I would love to try these blades!

Awesome PIF! Congrats to the respondents. Looking forward to the reviews!

Congrats to Billski and Jooky! I look forward to seeing the test results. Thank you in advance for your assistance and dedication.

No problem. Thanks for putting out a PIF like this.

Jooky said:

No problem. Thanks for putting out a PIF like this.

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You are welcome. Packages are ready and should be sent tomorrow (the post closed at 4pm and I did not get to it until after 5).

I tested the Astra Platinum today with my Schick Krona razor. It was not very smooth compared to the best blades I have used and the XTG neck pass left irritation at the usual two places. It actually reminded me of the Personna blades I usually use, except that it was less smooth on the other two passes as well. I also had two small weepers, one on my chin and one on the neck. By the end of the three-pass shave, it skipped and tugged -- so I will toss this blade in the bin and shave with a second Astra Platinum tomorrow. Rating so far is about a five out of ten so far but as I said, I will use a second Astra Platinum blade to see if the first one was affected by poor quality control.

I again tested an Astra Platinum DE blade today in my Krona, this time with the ARKO stick mashed into a puck in my mug. The shave was about the same as yesterday (although the lather with the stick is adequate but not as good as with the cream), by the third pass it was skipping and left some irritation on the usual spot on my neck. I give this blade a five out of ten overall (about the same as my usual Personna blades), it is not the best but for the price it is acceptable.

Tomorrow I am testing the Treet Dura Sharp in the Krona. I will use the ARKO cream for this test. Hopefully this blade lives up to its name, I would really like a blade that does not have to be tossed after every shave!

Today's blade was the Treet Dura Sharp with ARKO cream and the Krona razor. The first pass was smoother than the Astra Platinum but still far rougher than the blades I used 20 years ago. After a three-pass shave, the usual two spots on my neck were somewhat irritated and I had two small weepers that stopped bleeding quickly once I was done shaving. However, the blade did not shave as closely on parts of my neck as I usually like, the remaining stubble cannot be seen but can be felt when rubbing the neck in two spots. I have to give this blade about a five out of ten so far. Tomorrow I will shave with a fresh Treet blade (the blade I used today obviously was dull by the third pass) and use the ARKO soap rather than the cream and see if that changes anything. If this were the only blade on the market, I could adjust but I would rather use a better blade. So far the blade does not live up to its name.

Today's blade was the Treet Dura Sharp with ARKO stick mashed into a puck. I only attempted a two-pass shave as the blade dulled very quickly and a third pass is a recipe for lots of weepers and irritation with a dull blade (top to bottom on my neck is a dicey affair with a dull blade but is required in order to get near BBS). The blade skipped right from the beginning (I subscribe to the minimal pressure school of thought, so if the blade has a propensity to skip, it will with me for sure), the second pass was not that great either. Minimal irritation or weepers but as I did not attempt a third pass that would be expected. I give this blade a 3.5 out of 10 overall, it definitely does not live up to its name!

The next shave will be with the Russian-made Rapira. I hope this blade is better than the Treet Dura Sharp.

Ok, I received my blades yesterday and shaved last night. In order to get some sort of consistency out my blade reviews, I am going to be using the same set up for every shave. I will do a review shave every other day. I will make one post per blade, but will edit the post as I continue to use the blade. I will attempt to get 3 uses out of each blade.

My setup will be:
Razor-Parker 82R This is the razor I have used the most and the longest. I know this razor the best, and I tend to get great shaves with it.
Brush-My E&J Medium in Best Badger.
Soap-Bigelow branded Proraso Cream. This is a great cream and I haven't used it as much as I would like. This gives it a chance to get back in my rotation.

Now that all of that is out of the way, on to the review.

The blade up for review today is the Treet Dura Sharp. This blade has a paper outer wrapper and a wax paper inner wrapper. It had 4 very smalll glue dots that were easy enough to wipe off. I started with a N/S pass that went with the grain. Not bad at all. No tugging, no pulling, no dragging. This was a good sign. I have a pretty dense and heavy beard, I have tried many blades that just don't work on my beard, fortunately this blade cut through with ease. After the N/S pass I ran my hand over my face, some stubble still remained, but it was greatly reduced. My next pass was a S/N against the grain. This is the pass that usually gives me the most trouble, but I had no problems at all with this blade. I was fairly impressed. By the time this pass was completed the blade still seemed as sharp as it did when I took it out of the wrapper. My final pass was another N/S with the grain pass to mop up any stubble that may have been missed. This technique does not normally give me a BBS shave, for that I need an across the grain pass and some touch up. However, the technique I am using for these review shaves generally give me a shave I would rate between DFS and BBS. This blade definitely brought things closer to the BBS side of the things. I had a tiny bit of stubble on my right jawline and that was about it. After the shave I rinsed and ran my alum block all over my face and neck. There was hardly a tingle, so I am going to rate this blade as very smooth as well as sharp.

At the end of the first day/use I will rate this blade a 9 for sharpness and a 10 for smoothness for a 9.5 overall. So far, this puts this blade in the very top of all the blades I have tried before. I am very impressed with the Treet Dura Sharp.

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Shave 2

Shave 2 with this blade was very similar to shave 1. By the end of the against the grain pass I could feel the tiniest bit of tugging. This tells me that 3 shaves will most likely be the most I will get out of this blade, which is pretty consistent for me and most blades I have tried. Once again during my post shave process, my alum block gave me just a slight bit of tingle. So far, so good. I am still very enthusiastic about this blade, enough so that I plan on picking up a 100 of them sometime in the future. Sunday will be my last shave with this blade before moving on through the rest of the samples.

Thanks Jooky for posting and I look forward to your other reviews. I am glad that the Treet blade works for you so far, this tells me that I am not dealing with defective blades and instead just my beard being hard to shave (as usual). This is actually the expected result (from past conversations with different people regarding blades) as my beard is evidently the hardest to shave of anyone on here.

I just shaved with the Rapira blade and ARKO cream. This blade is definitely the most aggressive I have used, even more so than the Feather. However, it is not smooth at all but did not seem to skip. I have to give the blade credit, a two-pass shave accomplished what usually requires three passes. All this with a Krona razor, which is one of the more mild razors around. There were three weepers but as I was not expecting such an aggressive shave from this razor blade, that could be chalked up to technique. I will attempt my second shave with a fresh Rapira blade, probably tomorrow or Sunday. So far, this blade is about a 6 out of ten because it is somewhat rough but does the job very well overall. If it had been a smooth shave, the rating would be higher.

I give it a whril.

coyotewhisper said:

I give it a whril.

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I apologize, Coyote, but two people have already responded. I just don't have enough blades to open up this any further at this time. However, I may do this again sometime in the next few months, so watch B & B for another rendition of this type of PIF. However, if you have blades that you wish to review, you may post the reviews in this thread if you like.

Shave 2 with this blade was very similar to shave 1. By the end of the against the grain pass I could feel the tiniest bit of tugging. This tells me that 3 shaves will most likely be the most I will get out of this blade, which is pretty consistent for me and most blades I have tried. Once again during my post shave process, my alum block gave me just a slight bit of tingle. So far, so good. I am still very enthusiastic about this blade, enough so that I plan on picking up a 100 of them sometime in the future. Sunday will be my last shave with this blade before moving on through the rest of the samples.

My original intention was to add this review to my original post. However, I realized that some people may miss it if I simply edited the original, so instead I thought it best to give it its own post.

I just shaved with the Rapira blade and ARKO soap. Wow the ARKO soap (smashed into a puck) lathers great as long as you start with an almost dry brush and add little bits of water slowly. It took three minutes to lather up, but I had enough for at least five passes in my brush when I was done loading the brush. As for the Rapira blade, it survived three passes but a touch-up fourth pass in one spot on my neck produced four weepers, so this blade is barely surviving three passes. It isn't the smoothest blade and feels dull after three full passes but it shaves close for the most part and the weepers and irritation did not come until a fourth pass on one spot that did not shave the greatest (I will chalk that spot needing a fourth pass to a mistake in technique during the ATG pass, usually that isn't a problem). This is a reasonable blade -- probably about a 6.5 out of 10, the best of what I have tried so far out of this sampler pack.

Tomorrow or Monday I will shave with the Vidyut Zorrik Super and ARKO cream. Hopefully it lives up to its name.

Ok, I had my third and final shave with the Treet this morning. Noticed some dragging, some pulling, and a bit of tugging, but still got a very nice shave out it. Just a step or two below a BBS in fact. While I could MAYBE push this blade one more day, why bother? Having an uncomfortable shave is not worth getting one more shave out of a blade to me.

One thing I noticed with todays shave. Once I applied the alum, I thought my face was on fire. It must have dragged more than I noticed during the shave, because I haven't had burn like this from my alum block in a while.

So, at the completion of my review, I give these blades a solid 9 overall. I found them to be quite sharp, quite smooth, and they last an average amount of time for me.

These are blades that I will attempt to find more of.

These are the blades in question. Does anyone know of a shop that sells them?

I bought them at bestshave.net. They are based out of Turkey and sell various blades, Arko and Derby cream/stick, several razors and other assorted shaving supplies. They seem to be very honest and sell at decent prices. I can't complain about the shipping prices either, $7 to ship a half kilo of product from Turkey to northern Michigan barely covers the cost in this day and age (in my case it cost them $5.32 at current exchange rates to ship Turkish Post and probably at least another dollar for the small box the supplies came in).

Also, don't be shocked if an extra product is included, in my case a Perma-Sharp blade was also in the box. Since I was right at the maximum weight for the shipping range, that was probably all he could include extra without the shipping price increasing on him. If there were more headroom in the weight range for your order, you could find a couple of samples in the box -- I can't say because I don't know for sure.