In working my way through a sampler, I found a brand that feels smooth, comfortable and forgiving, but does not give me as close a shave. I was thinking about why this might be, and had a thought: maybe it's very slightly narrower than other brands.

A narrower blade would be less exposed, making it milder but less efficient. A slightly wider blade would be the opposite. It seems plausible that different factories in different parts of the world might turn out blades of slightly different dimensions.

It'd only take a precision caliper to check, but I don't have one. And I can't be the first to think of it, can I? But I've never heard discussion of this variable before, so perhaps I'm totally off base.

What do you think, does this make sense? Has somebody already checked it out? Does somebody have a set of calipers, a blade sampler and some free time?

I found an old post on another forum with some data on this. The upshot was that for most brands tested, there was no variance. A couple were slightly narrower or wider, but it didn't necessarily correlate to bring milder/more aggressive.

I'd also think that as a norm there would be little to no variance in blade width... I.M.O. the difference may be blade exposure (height of blade edge above the guard bar or comb) and blade angle rather than width. Which would be a function of the razor design itself.. It is known that the same blade will shave differently in different safety razors..
An easy cheap way to increase blade height and so aggressiveness is to shim the underside of the blade using a used blade/blades with the sharp edges bevels ground off. This could possibly give you everything smooth,comfortable,forgiving and possibly closer shaving...At any rate it's easy and cheap to do and in my experience it does work....