Blade Sharpness Research Project

[PALORAZOR]

Finally, for now, we have the new Dorco Prime Platinum in a plastic tuck. This one doesn't have a part number on it, but retailers who are breaking down the bigger boxes of these tucks are calling it the STP-301, so I will too. It doesn't have a date printed on it, but it was purchased within the last month.

This is the dullest of the four Dorcos tested so far, and like the ST-300, there is a large variance between the cutting force on one edge and the cutting force on the other edge. This one is the worst. You probably wouldn't want to use this batch.

This might be the same blade as the ST-300. It looks similar under a microscope, and the edge that is reasonably sharp on this one is just slightly duller than the edge that is reasonably sharp on the other one; so there is some overlap in the performance of the two, despite this one being worse overall, with one edge that is far too dull to meet any reasonable specification, despite being a flagship "Prime" blade.

View attachment 1885603


View attachment 1885604

This STP-301 has a finely ground uneven edge of medium thickness with distal honing and uneven medium coating. It looks similar to the ST-300. It might be the same blade.
View attachment 1885605

After testing, we see some medium chipping along the edge; the steel is typical mid-grade.
View attachment 1885606

Information Summary:

View attachment 1885607

Date	7/29/24	7/29/24	7/29/24	7/29/24	7/29/24
Blade	Dorco STP301	Prime Platinum		Vietnam	~2023
Shaves	0	P3	P6	P9	P12
Location	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top
Medium	Stren 8 .29	Stren 8 .29	Stren 8 .29	Stren 8 .29	Stren 8 .29
Dulling Substrate	New	Paper	Paper	Paper	Paper
Measurements	20	20	20	20	20
Std. Dev.	22	24	20	27	21
Median F (g)	97	98.5	104	98	112
Mean F (g) Btm	111	120	122	130	129
Mean F (g) Top	81	83	86	86	96
Mean F (g)	96	101	104	108	112
BESS Adj. Factor	0.83	0.83	0.83	0.83	0.83
Av. Adj. F (g) Bt	92	99	101	108	107
Av. Adj. F (g) Top	67	69	71	72	79
Median adj. F (g)	81	82	86	81	93
Mean adj. F (g)	80	84	86	90	93

View attachment 1885608

It is a good thing I only have one tuck of this one.

Blade Sharpness Test Index

Complete Data

Something not right here. The one's you have do not have 'made in Vietnam' printed on them like mine do. Also, the ones I have are printed in green ink. Looks like the picture of the razor blade on the package is slightly different than the one I have. Mine are some of the best blades I've tested shaving. Makes me wonder if you have a batch of fakes?

 

[PALORAZOR]

 

[WVShaver]

I gave myself some time to think about this because I feel like I need to respond since I am the one that originally called out the other blades as being fakes. Instead of trying to go into the minutia of the data, which could be attributed to production tolerances, I will just mention one thing. It is possible that the other blade is real, but if so it is certainly a factory reject. I have gone over the older photographs and the two blades reflect light completely differently under the same microscope, but that isn't where I am going with this.

Two or three years ago, well past the closing of the Personna plant in Israel, sellers from Israel started popping up and then disappearing selling supposed Personna Platinums. Now none of this is easily proved, but the circumstantial evidence along with comments elsewhere made it clear that factory rejects had been snuck out of the plant when it was closing. The location along with the ever switching seller made it pretty clear they weren't above the board. This was also when the price went up significantly and the trustworthy sellers had run out of blades. I already had my supply, but was waffling on adding to it.

Now the second part of this is related to Eastern Europe and most of the information is second hand from non English forums. From what I understand, there is no limit to what fraudsters will try to create fakes of. They we even faking Rubie blades when they weren't rare, supposedly in some of these countries it was hard to know whether you were getting real blades or not because it was so common. There have been several long discussions about this including how the math works out and it still seems unbelievable, but I have to trust people that live there that say this is the norm.

The one thing about these supposed Polsilver SIs that is undoubtedly off is the packaging, that couldn't have come from PPI because they wouldn't have changed it the same year that they were discontinuing a product. The threads on this go much more into the shape of the blade stampings and other things, but why would Super Iridium be omitted all of a sudden and not all printing? Even though I am pretty well convinced where these blades came from and some of the Eastern European posters were certain that blades couldn't have been snuck out of PPI, this is still a possibility. If they did, they would need packaging to put them in and that would explain the slightly off graphical design.

All that said, we are 8 years past when these blades were last distributed and at least 4 years since they have been available from trusted sources. I really don't see what excuse a seller has at this point trying to sell these at a premium when they themselves have no way of verifying their authenticity. In the intervening years, we have had at least 2 well know stores either fall for this or willingly try to profit from the demand. This excludes the current seller, but the last ones were about 2 years ago now. Where did these things come from? I am certainly not saying that the seller themselves called up a CN factor and asked if they could still print these, but is there still a middle man out there that was looking for suckers to offload the last of their fakes? We will likely never know as every time these come on the market the seller gets very defensive about how they got them and how much they are selling them for. This is why those threads on here and elsewhere exist, because for a time sellers were trying to make some money off of this and people had a reason to doubt their authenticity. This started with a poster wondering if their blades were fake without the luxury of a microscope or sharpness tester, just their original stash of authentic blades.

That's the last you are going to hear from me on this, but don't take this as hostile please. I am enjoying this thread greatly and would like to move on from this. Though I would like TRC to explain how they acquired these blades. The Personna discoveries have been enlightening and entertaining, those are the oldest mystery on here and now we have some answers.

I can’t remember if you responded on the “what blades did you purchase” thread or not when I posted the Personna Eddison blades I received with an actual clear date saying “27/09/2021 DA”

I still can’t make any sense of it since they should have stopped production a couple years before that date? Perhaps they still had razor blade supplies left and continued the production after Personna sold the factory to get rid of the last supplies. I doubt that’s what happened but it sure is confusing.

I personally quite like the Eddison and Tomy from the shaves I’ve had with them so far. The Viking sword is a little different but is also a good blade.

I was too late to the party to stock up on the reds in cardboard tucks. I did get some of the UK ones in plastic 10 packs everyone said were the same but they didn’t feel the same to me and after Helicopters test of the 2 it showed they were different blades. Maybe at one point they were the same and the last year or two they were made they changed them somehow to be more like the American blades.

 

[PALORAZOR]

 

[Flanders]

I can’t remember if you responded on the “what blades did you purchase” thread or not when I posted the Personna Eddison blades I received with an actual clear date saying “27/09/2021 DA”

I assume they are German, the Israeli plant shut down in 2018 or so the rumours go. I have seen the Eddison blades sporadically on eBay and the outer box is different I think. I know they don't say made in Germany, but since these were originally sold to a domestic customer base they may have not wanted to advertise that too loudly. For a couple reasons that I can think of and won't elaborate on. My source could be wrong about them being domestic blades, but they are the ones with Hebrew writing on them. I may have not seen your original post as that doesn't should like a thread that I follow, but probably should.

Edit: unless it's the what 100 blades did purchase thread

 

[Alex Jr]

I also sent some blades in the mail for testing that should be there by the end of the week. I think a couple are duplicates based on the photos posted. But this is most of what I sent -

-Ladas
Rapira Super Stainless
Rapira Chrome
Wilkinson Sword Brazil
Wilkinson Sword China
Wilkinson Sword German 2013
Wilkinson Sword German 2022
7 O Clock Yellow old pre 2017
7 O Clock Yellow 2019 and 2022
Personna Crystal
Personna Tomy
Personna Eddison
Personna X
Personna Viking Sword
Personna Comfort Coated 2015 in blue/yellow box
Personna Comfort Coated 2016 in new box
Personna Comfort Coated 2024 unmarked
Dorco Titan
Treet Durasharp In old yellow box
Treet Trig
Treet Silver
Treet Black Beauties
Gillette Super Thin from China with Jap flag
Rockwell Razors
Winner Plat
Winner SS
7 O clock India Green 2019 and 2023
Gillette Platinum light blue Russian “Swede”
Gillette Platinum Dark old inked logo
Gillette Silver Blues pre 2017
Gillette Silver Blues new 2021-2022
Astra SS Russian 2018
Astra SP Russian 2017, and a couple 2021-2022
Nacet newest 09-10-2023
Nacet undated meant for different market but likely 2021ish
And a couple other Nacets

Helicopter said he already had the Rapira Platinum Lux and Rapira Swedes so I didn’t send any of those. I figure it will take him awhile to get through all the blade testing but hopefully most of these will get tested eventually for anyone that was looking for any of these to be tested.

Nice list! Busy time for @helicopter.

Who has time for kids anyway?

 

[PALORAZOR]

Actually I think the Dorco Prime blades Helicopter tested are the made in Korea version. The ones I have are the made in Vietnam version.

I can send you some of the made in Vietnam blades if interested.

 

[Flanders]

Something not right here. The one's you have do not have 'made in Vietnam' printed on them like mine do. Also, the ones I have are printed in green ink. Looks like the picture of the razor blade on the package is slightly different than the one I have. Mine are some of the best blades I've tested shaving. Makes me wonder if you have a batch of fakes?

I think you are on to something, but the answer was posted above. The first one is their older logo and the second is the newer logo. As mentioned, HQ means it is made in Vietnam, but maybe they decided to start adding that. This opens up a bigger can of worms than them being fakes, I know I personally have some of each and have no idea how many. I never noticed this, but now I am going to have to check. I really hope they have improved their process and we can just shop based on the latest logo.

 

[PALORAZOR]

I think you are on to something, but the answer was posted above. The first one is their older logo and the second is the newer logo. As mentioned, HQ means it is made in Vietnam, but maybe they decided to start adding that. This opens up a bigger can of worms than them being fakes, I know I personally have some of each and have no idea how many. I never noticed this, but now I am going to have to check. I really hope they have improved their process and we can just shop based on the latest logo.

I think one is made in Korea and the other made in Vietnam. The ones I tested were the made in Vietnam version and they are excellent.

 

[Sweeney_]

Actually I think the Dorco Prime blades Helicopter tested are the made in Korea version.

Perhaps but see post #239

Dorco STP300

Same blade, print color and the older logo. HQ made in Vietnam

edit: on second thought, the blade print on that plastic tuck one does look a bit sketchy.

Anybody else see a difference?

 

[PALORAZOR]

Perhaps but see post #239

Dorco STP300

Same blade, print color and the older logo. HQ made in Vietnam

View attachment 1886525

edit: on second thought, the blade print on that plastic tuck one does look a bit sketchy.

Looks like the testing result for the cardboard vs plastic tuck was very different. I wonder if some of the old Korean blades were put into a plastic tuck? Maybe this is why it doesn't state made in Vietnam and the blade printing is different. Would be curious to test the blades I have.

 

[Sweeney_]

Looks like the testing result for the cardboard vs plastic tuck was very different. I wonder if some of the old Korean blades were put into a plastic tuck? Maybe this is why it doesn't state made in Vietnam and the blade printing is different. Would be curious to test the blades I have.

See my above edited post.
Sloppy logo job on that plastic tuck.
Look at the "i" in Prime and the font difference.

 

[helicopter]

We had some interest in the Rapira Platinum Lux, so I tested the one @Sweeney_ sent me. It looks like a well made blade of about average sharpness and durability. The two edges are extremely similar, which is a nice change of pace from a lot of blades that have been tested recently.

It comes in a nice cardboard tuck of five blades with double wrappers and medium wax dots.

The primary grind is fine and fairly consistent. There is a secondary grind that is a bit finer, and there is a honed third facet that comes about 20% of the way up the edge. The coating is fairly light.

After testing, the coating is gone, and the bevels are smoothed a bit. The edge is almost perfect. I suspect they prioritized smooth, tough, and resilient edge over one that is ultra hard in selecting this steel; there is no damage, but it dulled steadily through the test.

Information Summary:

Date	7/31/24	7/31/24	7/31/24	7/31/24	7/31/24
Blade	Rapira	Platinum Lux	Moscow	Russia	~2022
Shaves	0	P3	P6	P9	P12
Location	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top
Medium	Stren 6 .22	Stren 6 .22	Stren 6 .22	Stren 6 .22	Stren 6 .22
Dulling Substrate	New	Paper	Paper	Paper	Paper
Measurements	30	30	30	30	30
Std. Dev.	5	6	6	6	8
Median F (g)	52	60	62	67	75
Mean F (g) Btm	55	61	65	66	71
Mean F (g) Top	51	59	63	67	75
Mean F (g)	53	60	64	66	73
BESS Adj. Factor	1.22	1.22	1.22	1.22	1.22
Av. Adj. F (g) Bt	67	74	79	80	87
Av. Adj. F (g) Top	62	72	76	82	92
Median adj. F (g)	63	73	76	82	92
Mean adj. F (g)	64	73	78	81	89

Complete Data and Media Calibration

Blade Sharpness Test Index

 

[helicopter]

This evening I tested the Boker blade. It is another Solingen branded, "Made in EU" blade of moderate quality at a luxury price. It started out sharp, and the two edges were consistent, but it dulled fairly quickly, and it chipped a lot as it dulled. I shaved with it today, and it was fine, but for $0.76 per blade, I won't buy it again.

The packaging is a nice glossy cardboard tuck of ten blades with no date code and no country of origin. If it were a better blade, maybe they would be proud of the country of origin, but in this case, they are just hoping you won't mind that it is made in a location with lower costs that the one where the price is based. It is sort of like that Porsche that is made in Slovakia and competes with the Mazda CX-9. It is double-wrapped in plain paper and has medium wax dots.

It is double ground with a heavy distal coating. The grind is fairly fine and fairly even.

After testing, the coating is gone, and there is lots of small and medium chipping along the edge.

Information Summary:

I just can't take a blade of such unremarkable performance seriously at the price point. It is a good blade, but it is priced at five times the maximum I would expect to pay for a blade of its quality. If you want a German blade, get the Schick, and if you want a European blade, get the Bic CP.

Date	7/31/24	7/31/24	7/31/24	7/31/24	7/31/24	7/31/24
Blade	Boker	Ice Tempered	Stainless	European Union	~2023
Shaves	0	P3	P6	P9	P12	1
Location	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top
Medium	Stren 6 .22	Stren 6 .22	Stren 6 .22	Stren 6 .22	Stren 6 .22	Stren 6 .22
Dulling Substrate	New	Paper	Paper	Paper	Paper	Face
Measurements	20	20	20	20	20	20
Std. Dev.	5	5	11	13	14	6
Median F (g)	52.5	49.5	52.5	59.5	69	47.5
Mean F (g) Btm	54	51	55	64	76	50
Mean F (g) Top	51	51	56	61	70	49
Mean F (g)	52	51	56	63	73	50
BESS Adj. Factor	1.22	1.22	1.22	1.22	1.22	1.22
Av. Adj. F (g) Bt	66	62	68	78	92	61
Av. Adj. F (g) Top	62	62	69	75	85	60
Median adj. F (g)	64	60	64	73	84	58
Mean adj. F (g)	64	62	68	77	89	60

Blade Sharpness Test Index

Complete Data and Media Calibration

 

[WVShaver]

This evening I tested the Boker blade. It is another Solingen branded, "Made in EU" blade of moderate quality at a luxury price. It started out sharp, and the two edges were consistent, but it dulled fairly quickly, and it chipped a lot as it dulled. I shaved with it today, and it was fine, but for $0.76 per blade, I won't buy it again.

The packaging is a nice glossy cardboard tuck of ten blades with no date code and no country of origin. If it were a better blade, maybe they would be proud of the country of origin, but in this case, they are just hoping you won't mind that it is made in a location with lower costs that the one where the price is based. It is sort of like that Porsche that is made in Slovakia and competes with the Mazda CX-9. It is double-wrapped in plain paper and has medium wax dots.

View attachment 1886624
View attachment 1886625

It is double ground with a heavy distal coating. The grind is fairly fine and fairly even.
View attachment 1886627


After testing, the coating is gone, and there is lots of small and medium chipping along the edge.

View attachment 1886628

Information Summary:

View attachment 1886631

I just can't take a blade of such unremarkable performance seriously at the price point. It is a good blade, but it is priced at five times the maximum I would expect to pay for a blade of its quality. If you want a German blade, get the Schick, and if you want a European blade, get the Bic CP.

Date	7/31/24	7/31/24	7/31/24	7/31/24	7/31/24	7/31/24
Blade	Boker	Ice Tempered	Stainless	European Union	~2023
Shaves	0	P3	P6	P9	P12	1
Location	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top	Bottom/Top
Medium	Stren 6 .22	Stren 6 .22	Stren 6 .22	Stren 6 .22	Stren 6 .22	Stren 6 .22
Dulling Substrate	New	Paper	Paper	Paper	Paper	Face
Measurements	20	20	20	20	20	20
Std. Dev.	5	5	11	13	14	6
Median F (g)	52.5	49.5	52.5	59.5	69	47.5
Mean F (g) Btm	54	51	55	64	76	50
Mean F (g) Top	51	51	56	61	70	49
Mean F (g)	52	51	56	63	73	50
BESS Adj. Factor	1.22	1.22	1.22	1.22	1.22	1.22
Av. Adj. F (g) Bt	66	62	68	78	92	61
Av. Adj. F (g) Top	62	62	69	75	85	60
Median adj. F (g)	64	60	64	73	84	58
Mean adj. F (g)	64	62	68	77	89	60

View attachment 1886632

Blade Sharpness Test Index

Complete Data and Media Calibration

I believe the Fatip blade I tried a few days ago looked identical. It wasn’t anything special either.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they are the same blade since I believe the markings are the same. Mine felt below average on the sharpness though.

Edited to add - it’s possible I got them mixed up and it was a Boker since it was just a single from RBC but I had it marked as Fatip so it’s probably a Fatip.

 

[WVShaver]

I assume they are German, the Israeli plant shut down in 2018 or so the rumours go. I have seen the Eddison blades sporadically on eBay and the outer box is different I think. I know they don't say made in Germany, but since these were originally sold to a domestic customer base they may have not wanted to advertise that too loudly. For a couple reasons that I can think of and won't elaborate on. My source could be wrong about them being domestic blades, but they are the ones with Hebrew writing on them. I may have not seen your original post as that doesn't should like a thread that I follow, but probably should.

Edit: unless it's the what 100 blades did purchase thread

Yea, that’s the thread. I’d be a little surprised if they were made in Germany but not completely shocked. If they are made in Germany I bet they are just the reds relabeled and repacked but to me it seems like they feel different. I can’t wait to see what the tests show on all of the Israeli ones.

If I remember correctly the box of Edison either said made in Israel or just had Israel wording on it. I don’t speak the language so I’m not sure but I remember it was pointed out. If it didn’t say made in Israel then it could still be German but just marketed to Israel.

I have noticed there was a couple more Israeli made blades available on RBC like the Royal and Q Ball just last year I believe and they’ve been slowly disappearing from the site like discontinued blades do. So if the Edison’s disappear eventually it’s probably a sign they aren’t German? The Viking Sword and Tomy don’t have the same date code and I believe are older.

 

[markusk]

@helicopter

Im kinda confused on how to read the table with sharpness results.
What are the relevant numbers in this table?
For example, where to i see the sharpness of a new blade without using/corking?

On the old refinedshave.com test they had a smaller table, which was easier to understand, for example:

Blade: Astra Superior Platinum
New Blade Sharpness: 49
After Shave 1 Sharpness: 46
After Shave 2 Sharpness: 44
Average Sharpness: 46

 

[BigAlVista]

Guys, I gotta say...This is one of the best/most useful threads I've see on this forum. Thank you for the painstaking work of sorting through a confusing set of products whose manufacturers regularly change and obfuscate the performance of their products - intentionally.

Every day, I'm learning something new!

As this progresses, would you be able to provide results in a tabular (I.e. Excel) format so we can filter, sort and group your results? Also, you seem to be capturing other valuable information that could be used for analysis. It might be helpful to include that metadata in the outputs for each blade (e.g. Country of Manufacture, year of manufacture, coating type, and maybe factors you find under the microscope) so that we could track things like looking at performance by country of manufacture, compare the same blade across time or across manufacturing locations, or maybe even exploring the impact a type of grind has on sharpness.

Happy to help with the analytics -pm me if you'd like the support.

 

[helicopter]

@helicopter

Im kinda confused on how to read the table with sharpness results.
What are the relevant numbers in this table?
For example, where to i see the sharpness of a new blade without using/corking?

On the old refinedshave.com test they had a smaller table, which was easier to understand, for example:

Blade: Astra Superior Platinum
New Blade Sharpness: 49
After Shave 1 Sharpness: 46
After Shave 2 Sharpness: 44
Average Sharpness: 46

At RefinedShave.com, one shave is 2 days grown, head and face, with a Merkur 34. He used the edge on up clips for his tests, and used the same point on the blade.

For my tests, I use nylon monofilament fishing line, which I test for consistency and calibrate myself to BESS certified media, and then I do a conversion to the BESS cutting force. Those clips have lower cutting force than BESS media and are not certified. I have some of them around here, so perhaps I will calibrate them at some point, so we can compare my measurements or the BESS measurements to the clips.

I test every blade right from the package for the first set of measurements. I will typically wear the blade artificially by cutting three strips of office paper on a rubber cutting board. This is much faster than waiting for my hair to grow, and it is more consistent than shaving my face. I usually measure the blade I shave with as well, but since I only use up about 0.1 blades per day shaving, and use up 2-3 blades in a day with artificial wear, most of the wear in the measurements is artificial. There is going to be a big difference in actual shaving results for different gear, technique, and beards, but a strip of paper roughly converts to a 4 pass shave on a thick and coarse beard, somewhere around Northern Italian, I would guess. Since I have a full beard and Celtic ancestry, my shaves are usually about 0.7 sheets of paper. (Hopefully you've seen that world map that shows how beards everywhere in the World basically grow according to how far your ancestors were from the Mediterranean.)

 

[helicopter]

Know what, I've got a BESS calibrated blade sitting here from yesterday, so this is a good time to do this.

These clips are way too expensive to do 120 cuts like I did to calibrate the fishing line, so I'm not >99% confident in the conversion factor as I am with my own tests.

Date	8/1/24	8/1/24	7/31/24	7/31/24
Blade			Sally Bank	USA
Shaves			0	0
Location	Bottom	Top	Bottom	Top	Average	Average	Conversion
Medium	Clips EOU	Clips EOU	BESS	BESS	Clips EOU	BESS
Dulling Substrate	New	New	New	New
Measurements	6.00	6.00	30.00	30.00
Std. Dev.	5.82	4.83	4.74	5.49
Median F (g)	40.00	37.50	53.00	57.50	38.75	55.25	0.7013574661
Mean F (g)	37.50	35.83	53.27	56.83	36.67	55.05	0.6660611565
BESS Adj. Factor			1.2311	1.2094

But central tendency is between .66 and .71. There are some outliers, but they are real sharpness values that are there on the edge of the blade at certain locations, so we don't want to just ignore them or throw them out, but I would lean toward the median and call the conversion ratio 0.69 for my testing, if I were using clips. On Refined Shave, he threw out the outliers, so I would use 0.7 to compare my converted BESS numbers to his numbers.

So:

Helicopter number * 0.7 = refined shave number

Refined shave number / 0.7 = helicopter number

I don't know where his head/face shaves will fall on the paper cut scale. Maybe one of you can work it out. I am guessing it is somewhere in the range of P3, though.