Wednesday May 15 (just after midnight) - Simplicity & Injector Blade Focus
Prep: Hot face wash with Aleppo olive oil soap with 20% bay laurel oil
Razor: Supply 2.0 matte black stainless steel injector with "SE" open comb plate; Personna white box cartridge blade (1)
Soap: Arko stick
Brush: Supply Silvertip Synthetic 24mm
Lather Bowl: None
Post: rinse, alum, rinse - and nothing else
Last shave: Sunday morning - 2.75 days
The shave stuff:
View attachment 294245
The blade array:
View attachment 294246
Top to bottom: Vintage American-made Schick Plus Platinum, Japanese-made Supply Black Label, American Personna-made house-branded Supply White Label, standard white box cartridge of American-made Personnas.
I am continuing the Test Plan. Today I tried the third blade, the American-made Personna. I used one from the Personna white plastic box cartridge; one from the Supply-branded all-plastic white cartridge would have been the same blade.
I loaded a fresh one in my Supply 2.0/SE injector. As usual, I cheated and placed it into the disassembled razor instead of injecting it. Thus removing any possibility of "blade scrape" error from the blade test.
The Arko stick and synthetic brush created a quick and plentiful lather, as usual. I then did my two standard passes of WTG on the face and ATG on the neck, then XTG on the face and WTG on the neck.
Excellent shave, leaving me DFS near BBS. Alum was silent.
My impression was that this blade was slightly less sharp or slightly rougher than the first two. I could feel and faintly hear a rasp as it mowed the whiskers. There was none with the Black Label and I had actually double-checked with the vintage Schick to see if I had a blade in the razor. I think this blade started at about the level the other two would be at by the second or third shave. But with the thick, stiff, durable injector blades that is not a hugely significant difference.
My conclusion: as far as sharpness and smoothness is concerned, my mental ranking is unchanged, but really any of these three brands would be fine. Barring large differences in durability (the next test phase), I would simply buy whichever was cheapest or most readily available.
It did occur to me that I might be using the wrong razor for these tests. The heavy solid metal Supply 2.0 has enough mass simply to plow through my whiskers regardless of the blade in it. In a very light razor, the differences might be more noticeable. So before I move on to durability, I am going to repeat these last three shaves with fresh blades in one of those very small and light bakelite- or plastic-handled vintage Schick razors. I will use my E-1 Schick so that I can continue to place rather than inject the blades to remove any possible "blade scrape" variable.
Next shave will be in two days with a fresh vintage Schick blade in my vintage Schick razor.
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