hello folks, just a small question about blades in general. i had an awesome shave today with a british mid 40s flat bottom 4 piece tech razor and astra sp blade. i have never had a shave feel this good with a mach 3 or variant. 0 irritation and almost bbs. my lower neck always has a little left. its a shame the world was duped with newer better ways to shave but that s history i guess. i am glad i found this and the forum i am on now. would the people who owned these razors new have experienced similar results with 40s blades or are modern blades that much sharper/smoother.? what ended de shaving in the seventies.? were carts that good then? any thoughts no matter how many times repeated would be cool.thanks gary
I think carts were the latest and greatest, and like the frog slowly brought to boil in the pot, the slowly degrading shaving experience wasn’t really noticed. Many got a decent shave with the Trac 2, and when 3 and 4 and 5 blades became normal, nobody really remembered, or even had experience of the old ways. Grandpa did, and maybe Dad did, but those old guys just needed to get with the times! Newer is always better! And so knowledge was lost. We live in a time of shaving rennaisance, and are blessed! Such riches we enjoy! The knowledge is slowly growing. But, even so, Mantic estimates the single blade customer base at no more than 3% of the shaving population. Frankly, I doubt it’s half that...
Hi, good evening everyone. As far as "Are blades from the fourties as sharp or sharper than their modern equivalents?" Yes they were. I personally have a small Stash of blades from the fourties, and these guys are fantastic. They are the Gillette Blue Blades, and although they are carbon steel blades, they are sharp, and long lasting. You all have seen many of my SOTD posts where I use those old Gillette Blues, and I use them because they give a good shave. Moving right along to the Stainless Steel era, the pioneering company's that developed those blades were hard pressed to improve upon those old Gillette Blues, but they did. Imho, they did not improve on them all that much. After all, how do you measure the difference between greatness, and excellence? As far as the cartridge razors climbing to the top of the shaving ladder, imho, it was the nescessity of the high speed lifestyle of the working world in the mid 1970's for a quick and efficient shave. Everyone got on the cart bandwagon too. Those new and improved cartridge razors that didn't require thought nor attention to shave with, were the very thing for the sheeple. I'm kind of surprised more barber shops didn't offer straight shaves. Instead of all the New fangled harstylists and salon operators offering the newest and coolest hairstyles. I actually tried for several years during the 1980's to find a barber in this area who offered straight razor shaves. None were to be had. And when I would inquire about a shave and a haircut, most told me they didn't offer them due to liabilities. They were afraid of lawsuits. I did find one pleasant old fellow who offered to shave me with his DE. I did have him shave me a couple of times, but it cost too much to justify it. So there you have it. That's my take on the blades and earlier carts. Have a good night all.
The world filled up with dopeheads and lazy people. I think the blades were plenty sharp. Modern became faster with less technique involved. Gagets and gimmicks to the head of the line.
Patents ran out. The last patent Gillette had that brought them income from the DE world was stainless steel - and Wilkinson Sword beat them to the punch on that (and paid royalties to Gillette). Bic then came up with disposables, and cartridges had a MUCH higher profit margin. Some guesses are up to 3,000 percent, at least early on. Pretty simple. Keep in mind that Gillette was the first major company to use the 'loss leader' technique, like inkjet printers. High profit margins on consumables was their mainstay - and then they could no longer justify more than 100% profit margins on the blades. *shrug* My complaints are waste and bad information, not their profiteering.
Marketing made carts sound like the answer if you had poor technique and made it sound like the new cool thing( like Tang) The price discrepancy wasn’t as severe. And a generation later the damage was done.
Maybe the safety razor is going to become mainstream again. Check out this video I spotted on Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1816643765307243
Gillette was an early adopter of the practice but not the originator. The high profit margin consumables and proprietary tooling to use the consumable concept really should go to William Painter who invented and patented the familiar crown bottle caps and founded Crown Cork & Seal. Painters idea was even better than Gillettes since a single use of his cap made it unusable even a second time.
I agree that non-reusable caps is the first major disposable - but I was talking about the loss leader concept. Sell the razor at a loss or break even, and make high profits on the blades. With bottle caps, they're just sold and used. No loss leader.
Ah, but there was only one source for the bottle caps and one source for the machine to use them. The machine was sold at a great price point but then the money was made on the caps.
*nod* Absolutely - I can see that - it's the same with most consumables. I'm going off of other people's research, and the books I've looked at on marketing pointed at Gillette for the loss leader. I'd bet that Painter still made money off of the machine, and then made money off of the caps - and when the patents ran out, still made money off of the machine and supplies Gillette (the company) was greedy enough that they made no plans for when the patents would dry up.
Crown Cork & Seal is still around and still innovating packaging. AbE: There are other things also attributed to Gillette but that were simply examples of adopting what worked in other industries. An example was Captain Emerson who developed Bromo Seltzer (and Fizzies) who was the pioneer in world wide mass marketing directly to the consumer through the then state of the art Newspaper and Magazine formats.
There's also a difference in that bottle caps and machines are not end-user products. Not too many individuals are worried about capping bottles while millions of men bought razors and blades.
But probably by a much smaller number of machines. Actually this is probably an interesting comparison. I'd expect that there would be a moderate number of bottle capping machines sold to a smaller number of actual users (assumes a company owns multiple machines) with a large number of caps sold. By comparison, Gillette would be expected to sell a large number of razors in a roughly 1:1 ratio of users (I doubt men we buying Goodwill razors by the handful) but buying only a moderate amount of blades (perhaps 1-2 packs/month).
@BaylorGator might be the one to talk to about machinery and consumables - he's involved in large scale manufacturing that involves packaging. From what I've seen in razors I've picked up, and ones given to me, I'd suspect that razors were sold in about a 3-1 ratio over the general use lifespan of the user. A 40's razor in a 60's package, a 20's razor in a 40's package, a 30's razors in 50's packaging. It could be absolute merde, but it seems like the original, well-built razors were replaced every 15-20 years, even if the original razor was still in good shape. Possibly gifts? "Hey, dad! This razor was in a shiny package, so we bought it for you!" I have no personal knowledge about blade use - my father and grandfather used electrics the whole time I remember them shaving (weird, considering my grandfather shaved his head bald, and worked in third world countries), but a number of people have talked about their father/grandfather being thrilled at the Wilkinson Sword because they could make a blade last longer than a week. That implies that you didn't get more than 7 shaves out of a carbon steel Gillette blade, so that'd be about a tuck a month. I'm even looking at some packaging that sold _one_ blade at a time, in a plastic blister shell. Looks like a Personna Double-Edge II. Green cardboard. Bets that was a gas station package?
My father fondly remembers Fizzies. Which were then removed from the market. B. W. Middlebrooks - I bought one of those razors just a couple of weeks ago - I'm working on clearing the rust, and I'll need to remove the scales. In any case, THAT was almost "Mary Kay" cosmetics in their business. I'm paraphrasing what I found in a number of different places, but apparently they advertised in papers/mags, but sold through representatives. Once the representative had a large enough order together, they shipped the various items (tooth paste, brushes, combs, razors, and all sorts of sundries) in crates and barrels to a local business to be delivered by that representative. The representative wasn't _paid_ directly, but rather was given gifts based on the value of what they sold. The razor had no country stamp on it, so I was researching to try to come up with date. B.W. Middlebrooks started by the 1890's and was gone by 1930. Apparently one of their businesses was buggies and supplies. Anyway - either the razor was from the late 1800's, or it was a US made blade blank.
