......all vintage stainless razor blades were excellent to great? Seriously, I've never found a dog of a model yet. Individuals maybe but never a compete line. Why? When there are SO many pooches nowadays.....
Maybe it's something to do with makers of vintage equipment having pride in their work, quality of materials and design, good quality control and the fact that people wouldn't put up with a bad product. Plus, they were built to last instead of building in planned obsolescence. Nowadays, the companies patent everything and when the patent runs out, they build something "new and improved" to replace it. Keurig is trying to do that with their latest version of their coffee brewer, but I'm not switching from a K-Cup to a Vue in my house. EDIT: I just realized you were specifically speaking of blades. I was thinking of razors and blades in general. I still think some of my points are valid.
I've never thought of vintage stainless blades as great, (except vintage Wilkinson's) but some of the vintage carbon blades are lovely. Still, with most modern stainless blades being Teflon coated, it makes for a nice shave. Russian, Israeli and Japanese modern blades are really nice, but I find Indian and Egyptian blades to be sub-par. YMMV.
Really? Wilkinson Sword Light Brigades and Super Swords, Gillette Spoilers and Platinum Plusses, Schick Plus Platinums, etc. etc. and the legendary, greatest of them all Personna Tungsten 74s? No there are about 2 or 3 % of what's made today that are truly great but just about everything back then was of exceptional quality.
Remember the vintage stainless blade makers of the 1960s and early 1970s were in a high level competition with each other to gain market share because DE blades were the absolute cash making machines for the makers in that day. So they plowed all their best techniques, research, advertising and money into developing the very best blade. Now that they have long since moved to the cartridge wars, DE blades, along with Injectors and SEs, do not receive the best techniques, research, advertising and money. So we are left with a secondary market situation where good enough becomes good enough. Some blades do rival the blades of old but only a few because the big profits are in 4 and 5 blade proprietary cartridges.
+1 on all points. I've used no-name hospital blades from 1965 (ASR, I think) that match or exceed every modern stainless blade I've tried. Hey, Plan.
