RayClem's Blade Evaluations

Based on your high marks (and other’s as well), I picked up 100 Silver Stars. The first few strikes were kinda bad, but it quickly became a blade giving the same interesting feedback as a Gillette Platinum Swede (Russia).

Not top tier, but I am happy to say the $7.99 I spent on them was not flushing money down the toilet. Probably a fine match for aggressive razors.

Going back to your days on B&B I have held your blade reviews in high regards. A new blade reviewer has come on as of late, helicopter on B&B. He tests the cutting power as well as takes photos of the blade edge. Not surprisingly, his findings are much in line with your own. There are some outliers. He has found that Personna 2022-2024 Comfort Coated blades to be very sharp while also having incredible edge retention. This somewhat goes against your findings that the blades have a tough coat that prevents their sharpness from shining through.

What do I think? Well I had to test it out myself. I picked up a few boxes of 2023 CCs and loaded them into a Gamechanger 76. The beginning of the first shave was awful. Without the data from helicopter, I would have given up. But I used a trick I had learned. I palm stropped the blade (while in the razor) a bit. After this the shave was a mixed bag. I could feel the coating while also sometimes feeling the very sharp blade. The second shave was great. Very nice, it felt like a sharper Gillette Swede Platinum. All the coating was was gone and the blade was super sharp. Going forward, I think I will aggressively palm strop the blade. It seems the steel is super duper USA steel that has incredible edge retention. It is just "protected" by the comfort coating.

Going back to your days on B&B I have held your blade reviews in high regards.  A new blade reviewer has come on as of late, helicopter on B&B.  He tests the cutting power as well as takes photos of the blade edge.  Not surprisingly, his findings are much in line with your own.  There are some outliers.  He has found that Personna 2022-2024 Comfort Coated blades to be very sharp while also having incredible edge retention.  This somewhat goes against your findings that the blades have a tough coat that prevents their sharpness from shining through.

What do I think?  Well I had to test it out myself.  I picked up a few boxes of 2023 CCs and loaded them into a Gamechanger 76.  The beginning of the first shave was awful.  Without the data from helicopter, I would have given up.  But I used a trick I had learned.  I palm stropped the blade (while in the razor) a bit.  After this the shave was a mixed bag.  I could feel the coating while also sometimes feeling the very sharp blade.  The second shave was great.  Very nice, it felt like a sharper Gillette Swede Platinum.  All the coating was was gone and the blade was super sharp.  Going forward, I think I will aggressively palm strop the blade.  It seems the steel is super duper USA steel that has incredible edge retention.  It is just "protected" by the comfort coating.

The more the merrier, I say, when it comes to blade evaluations. Evaluation are subjective, so the larger the dataset, the better the analysis. 

When I did my evaluations, I was trying to go through a lot of blades as quickly as possible to help those who were looking for alternatives to Russian blades. Hopefully, I accomplished that. 

When I evaluated the Personna Comfort Coated blades, the blades were from stock prior to 2020. I wanted to compare them to the Personna Platinum Coated blades made in Israel when I learned that facility was closing. Both the Comfort Coated and Platinum Coated blades were made from USA steel. The difference was in the coating. The Comfort Coated blades were very smooth on the first shave, but the sharpness was muted until the coating wore off. By palm stropping the blades, you removed the thick layer of coating revealing the true sharpness of these blades. Being made of USA steel, the edge retention is quite good. The same thing applies to many of the knives made in the USA compared to those made in China.