For daily shavers that shave once a day, how many days on average do you use a DE blade before changing it? Edit: Isn't it great that the DE wet shaving offers so many options. I love reading the replies. Even if you get different performance from different blades, please take the poll based on either an average of your blades, or on your favorite preforming DE blade.
I go 3 and out. While able to pull a 4th shave out of most DE blades, the shave quality begins to degrade. I don't feel the need to try and stretch sub-par shaves from a blade due to cost like I did in my cartridge days. The three I have stock piled are Red Pack Personna, Gillette Super Thins, and Shark Super Chromes. None of which are very pricey blades. Injector blades seem to last a little longer for me and I have been getting 5 good shaves per blade.
I took your question to refer to DE blades, and put 3. Injector blades I'd say 7, SE, 4 or 5 for the stainless ones.
Three, 4 pass shaves is it for me. I have tried the stropping and stuff, but i just toss them after the third shave.
It really depends on the razor and blade. For a Gem Pella, I can get 7 days. For an Astra or 7 O'Clock Black 4 days. However, for most blades, 3 is the average.
I hand strop all my DE and SE blades. I can get seven 3-pass shaves from every blade, however... I put a fresh DE blade in every Monday and swap it from razor to razor until Friday. I put a fresh SE blade in the first Sunday of the month and swap it from razor to razor until the end of the month. Saturdays are for str8s.
+1000. I recently re-discovered 7AM blades and I'm getting 5+ shaves per blade. Those blades just work well with my Gillette NEW. On a different razor I couldn't get the same brand of blade to last more than 3 shaves, and 3 was really stretching it. Hand stropping makes a huge difference, especially with SE blades in my experience. I can make an SE blade last 5 or so shaves with hand stropping. Without, I get around 2 shaves, even from the stainless kind.
The Walmart Personna I used 2 days and ditched it--but it was also the first blade I ever used DE shaving. Slapped a Derby in and have got 5 shaves so far and could easily go for a couple more----I'll try the Personna again now my technique has improved and see how that goes. And yes--I'm a noob.
I use my blades 3 day, to get the optimum shave each day. I am not using the high price blades. DE blades are a inexpensive enough to change regularly, they are whole lot cheaper then those make believe multi blades.
3 I try to keep it at 3 I know I forget some times and maybe go 4 and that is fine with the blades I use. but I know that with 3 I will always have a sharp blade.
7 shaves is what I can get on average. I use vintage blades almost exclusively...Wilkinson, Gillette (Spoilers and Platinum Plus), Schick (Super Chromium and Plus Platinum), Personna 74, and an assortment of others both stainless and carbon steel. Most of the carbon steels give me about three shaves. The Personna 74 just keeps going until I get sick of it and throw it out.
5 with better blades (SE Ted Pella, 7Oclock Black, Iridium), 3 with the others, sometimes stretching to 4 if it is going well. Since I am using up the inferior inventory half the time, I'd say I am averaging 4 overall.
Great Poll, I recently did the Gillette Super Thin and got 5 great shaves and the 6 was ok. So that is why i chose 5. Good Blades in general have a 3 great shaves if more than it is a good blade. But also it depends on combination with razors. I need to find one that can do at least 10 . Once I do, I am sticking with that one .
I agree. I've started off with a Mergress and Red Personnas, then tried Feathers in the same razor. Didn't work for me. Right now, I am using a Muehle R89 with Feathers, which is a fantastic combo IMHO and I am getting about 4 shaves with 3 passes each per blade. EDIT: It must have been my technique or my prep or whatever which improved but over the past month or so I have getting easily 5 shaves out of each Feather blade. Could use the blades most likely even 1 or 2 days longer but I am not pushing it. Blade gets dumped after Friday's shave, razor gets cleaned and I use the straight over the weekend.