Shave'n Blind Blade Test

One more blade to go before part II starts. I am most interested to know what blades 11, 9, and 5 are, and then compare them again. Because they are all worth shaving with.

This has been really fun. Part II has repeats and maybe new blades, and I don't think I'm going to try to guess with those but just report the shaves and see where it leads. I'll post my results (how close my guesses were) when Alex gives me the go ahead to look at what I shaved with for the last 33 days (36 once I'm finished).

Joel
 
I'm about to start on blade 08 this evening. I have no guesses as to what they are as I've been using Personna labs / meds pretty much exclusively for the last couple of years, but so far:

01 - Didn't like. Two OK shaves then blunt as 'owt.
02 - 04 No complaints, worked pretty well.
05 - Hated. Felt like it had left the factory without being sharpened, suffered through one shave.
06 - Liked a lot.
07 - Didn't like. Very rough, tugged a lot for one and a half shaves before it was binned.

Until blade 05 I was starting to think that there was not that much to blade choice, I have revised my opinion!
 
Yeah,

I _really_ don't think it's possible to do this blind comparison and come away believing all blades are "more or less the same"

For me I can divide the blades into four sets:

Blades I really like: 12, 11, 09, 05
Blades that I would use: 06, 07, 01
Blades that aren't good for me: 10, 03, 08, 02
Blades that should never be used by anyone anywhere: 04

I really think 03 is a feather, my experience is like what I remember from my other feather shaves. I know those are great blades and highly regarded, but they don't work for me. I end up cut up... The beauty of the blind test is that I always wondered if I was just scared by the reputation and the talk. Now I have experienced the shave without reputation or talk affecting it, and I'm pretty sure that was it.

04 is the only blade I didn't do three complete shaves with. It was SO bad that after the first day I would do one pass and switch to an emergency backup blade in a different razor to complete the shave.

Joel

PS - I like blade 00 :)
 
I'm curious gentlemen, how confident are you with your experimental results? If you ran the same test again, would you report the same results?

The above is a question I'd like to ask all the participants. How should I word it?
 
I am confident in a few things: some blades are great, some are horrible, and some are average! Besides those major groupings, I a not confident which blade is which. Perhaps I will guess a few right though. I think the best design would be: zeroth blade, test blade 1, zeroth blade, test blade 2, etc. It would take longer per set, but would be constantly compared to a control. I also
It the idea of assigning numeric values to a few parameters for each blade (I.e. sharpness 9/10, smootness 8/10, longevity 9/10, preference 9/10). Thats my $0.02!
 
I'm confident that assuming the blades themselves are consistent I'd report pretty much the same. You do occasionally get a bad blade in a pack, so the three I've really disliked so far could have been anomalous.

I'm not good at judging sharpness though - blades for me fall into two categories, sharp enough or not.
 
I have a hard time with sharpness as well. How confident am I? Not very. Completed the set today, and I have had a blast. But here's the thing: there are days my GSB doesn't feel awesome. So every day is different no matter how hard we try to make it the same.

If this points to a few blades I like, I'd love to do a blind trial with 15 blades in three kinds. For example: five GSB's, five Astras, five PolSilver SI and see what the averages are. I think over a larger sample things would rise to the surface better smoothing out the daily changes.

Joel
 
Shaved this morning with my trusty GSB. Interesting now that I've tuned into every aspect of the shave it doesn't feel like the best blade I've used in the last month. But then again, it could just be an off day. I was hot after shoveling snow for nearly an hour, so that affects it as well, even though I showered. We'll see what the next two days hold.

Joel
 
alexface said:
I'm curious gentlemen, how confident are you with your experimental results? If you ran the same test again, would you report the same results?

The above is a question I'd like to ask all the participants. How should I word it?
Click to expand...
Hello gentlemen! I'm new here but I've been in the test for a while. Today was Blade 8, shave 2 for me. Alex just tipped me off to this Forum.

#8 has been pretty crappy, but #7 was so bad, the ratings for #8 looked good in comparison. I guess that's a flaw in the methodology.

My zeroth was Personna Med Prep, so I wondered if that set the bar too high. But when I got to #4, I was intrigued. I can't wait until the end when I can identify #4 and compare directly to my Med prep standard.

And to answer Alex' question, I think, given same blades in the same order, I would answer the same way, 90% sure.
 
Blade 08 turned out to be a nice sharp one, so that went down well. Onto 09 this evening, the end's in sight!

The hardest thing for me is that blades are the one thing I never change, but I'm used to rotating razors, soaps and brushes. Sticking with one razor etc is hard! I have gotten a bit of variety by switching between my matt and B1 iKon OC, at least the colour's different.

I am missing my ATT though!
 
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