Comment on Monday SOTD Thread, August 11th, 2025 (#790)
gcgallant@sub.wetshaving.social 1 week agoWhat do you think varies in blade manufacture? Do you think there are only a few places that make them, and specifications vary? Does someone (perhaps Feather) control their whole process, including band-steel?
walden@sub.wetshaving.social 1 week ago
I don’t have any insider insight to the blade industry other than what I’ve read in passing over the past few years. The most interesting one to me was when Personna (or rather, whoever owns the Personna brand, which is now something else) moved the manufacturing of their only DE shaving blade (Platinum Chrome) from Israel to Germany. The nomenclature changed from Isreali Red to German Blue (why people don’t just call them Platinum Chrome is beyond me). It was interesting because the rep who came on the sub said 1) Platinum Chrome is Personna’s only shaving blade, and 2) they physically moved the machine(s) from Israel to Germany.
#1 is interesting because of course there’s also “Lab Blue” and “Med Prep” (note: I’m woefully out of date with the current branding/naming), but apparently they don’t consider those to be general shaving blades and the marketing department ignores them. #2 was interesting because that seems like a lot of work, so obviously there must be relatively few of these specialized machines.
I do think there are only 1 or 2 manufacturers in each known country – so Egypt might have 1 or 2, Germany might have 1 or 2, India, China, etc. The difference between each brand of blade has to be slight changes in the bevel grind, changes to the steel that’s used, and probably some relatively major changes in coatings. The style of printing/packaging might change but I’m not sure if they even get printed/packaged in the same building or if they get sent off for that process. I’m sure it depends.
I’d like to know why certain blades like these V12’s are so incredibly smooth feeling to me. They don’t bother my skin at all, are very sharp, and whatever grind they have works great for my whiskers.
gcgallant@sub.wetshaving.social 1 week ago
Yeah, I would think that there aren’t many actual producers of blades and that many blade companies are just having blades made and selling them. Perhaps grinding angle, coating type, and type of band-steel, can be specified to make a blade perform differently from others.