DE Razor Blade Thickness Over the Decades

I know the old 3 hole blades at the time of the Gillette Old razors were thicker than the blades today.

What about the semi-modern Gillette Blue Blades of the 1930's and he 1940's? Were they also a tad thicker than the current DE blades?

Here are two posts I made regarding the thickness of various Gillette blades I measured.

xillion said:

I opened up a few vintage Gillette blades from my collection and made some thickness measurements.





Old Type three hole blade 812 date code (US made): .0056" (0.14224mm)

New Type blade (British made): .0067" (0.17018mm)

Blue Gillette Blade (French made): .0062" (0.15748mm)

Thin Blade R4 date code (US made): .0044" (0.11176mm)

Super Blue Blade H4 date code (US made): .0039" (0.09906mm)

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xillion said:

I also measured a US made New Type blade.





New Type blade A1 date code (US made) .0064" (0.16256mm)

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and what is the thickness of modern blades?

dionesius3 said:

and what is the thickness of modern blades?

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0.0042" - 0.0043" approx.

Interesting post. Thanks for the research.

I also opened a vintage Gillette blade from the 1920's and compared it to a contemporary blade. Though my mic is only incremented in thousands of an inch, I could detect no difference in the thickness of the two blades.



Vintage Gillette 3 hole:



A Personna blue:



My suspicion (for what it's worth) is the perception that 3 hole blades are "thicker" comes from their increased rigidity as a result of having more metal mass through the center as opposed to the "new" blade design with a substantial amount of the center removed.

Very interesting! Tim

Highspeedlane said:

...
My suspicion (for what it's worth) is the perception that 3 hole blades are "thicker" comes from their increased rigidity as a result of having more metal mass through the center as opposed to the "new" blade design with a substantial amount of the center removed.

Click to expand...

My measurements with digital calipers are roughly similar to those posted above by Chris. A modern blade is about 0.1mm and an old 3 hole blade is about 0.15mm, or approximately 50% thicker.