having a go with platinum safety razor blades

For my most recent shaving adventures, I decided to try a different type of safety razor blade, the platinum type.

The results have actually been pretty good.

Any safety razor blade labeled as "platinum" to the best of my knowledge refers to a platinum coating. The purpose of a platinum coating is primarily for corrosion resistance (as in to prevent rusting). But, supposedly, platinum has hypoallergenic properties, which I take to mean "won't do anything weird to your skin".

My reason for trying a platinum blade was to see if the blade out-of-the-box resulted in a smoother shave or not.

Before getting into that, a few notes about Lord blades.

Lord is a blade made in Egypt. Generally speaking, the lowest cost platinum blade (at least in the US) is Lord Platinum.

In addition, Lord also has some of the lowest cost chrome safety razor blades on the market, the Shark Super Chrome. Yes, Shark is a Lord brand.

I have both of these blades, and no, they are not the same thing in different packaging.

To the best of my understanding, chrome blades dirty up quicker (and show up fingerprints very easily), scratch more easily and do not last as long as a platinum blade does. And yes, I'd have to agree with that assessment.

But does a platinum blade shave more smoothly?

In my limited test from a few shaves, yes.

I do believe the platinum coating actually matters for both smoothness and blade longevity. But then again, that's just with Lord Platinum. Would Astra Superior Platinum be the same or different? Or Gillette Platinum? Or Gillette 7 O'Clock Super Platinum blades for that matter? They all have platinum coatings too.

There is another reason I went with Lord blades specifically, other than price.

Some manufacturers use too much wax in the packaging.

Every new safety razor blade is wrapped in paper. In order to keep the blade in the paper without shifting around and ruining its sharpness, most manufacturers use little wax dots to hold the blade in place.

When you take a new blade out of its paper wrapper, some of that wax is left behind. That wax must be scraped off (usually with the old blade you're about to discard). If you don't do that, the blade won't fit correctly in the razor.

With some blades, sometimes you deal with four large wax dots on the removal of any new blade from its wrapper. Two on one side, two on the other. Sure, the blade is new and sharp, but the extra step of removing all that wax is involved. That gets annoying real quick.

Lord blades (including Shark) thankfully only result in having two very small wax dots left behind on one side of the blade when a new one taken out of the wrapper. The wax is easy to remove and just takes a few seconds.

I guarantee there are some DE shavers out there who sometimes mistake a new blade as a bad just because of all that wax that resulted in a poor fit in their razor.

What happens if wax is left on the blade? The next time you load a blade into your safety razor, watch it as you tighten the head into place. You'll notice the blade is being purposely bent by design. If wax is on the blade, that means a fit flush to the head isn't possible. The middle of the blade will be at a different position compared to the sides.

Clean the wax off first, and then the blade will be properly fitted into the razor.

Have you tried different blades? You probably have. It's probably true other blades you thought were bad actually aren't, and the problem was the wax left on the blade, causing an improper fit.

You don't have to be super-precise about wax removal. Just get the stuff off so there's nothing to unintentionally add height to any part of the blade, and you're good.

Back to the Lord blades, yes, Shark Platinum exists, but the Lord brand was slightly cheaper, so I went with that. I do not know if Shark Platinum is a copy of Lord Platinum or not.

For my face, Lord Platinum seemed to be smoother compared to other blades I have. This may mean I'll try out more platinum coated blades in the future.

Published 2025 Jun 10