OneBlade Blade Options

Recently Oneblade started offering a Gem carbon blade coated (PTFE) as they appear to be fazing out the Feather FH10 blade. The price is 30 for $18.95. The blades have gotten good reviews in particular that the blades last longer(no surprise). Someone on another forum stated that Kai makes a carbon blade (no coating) that also fits perfectly in the Oneblade and the shaves were very good. I would think those blades have to be dried very carefully with out touching the blade after shaving.

Wow.....that is interesting.

The Feather carbon blades could be stropped and sharpened. I was thinking of rigging up some sort of jig to do that but I could not find out what the bevel angle is on a Feather SE blade. I think it is compound so that might have also been a problem.

I wish that One Blade would make an open comb version.

Correction:

The Oneblade carbon PTFE blades are not made by Gem rather by some unknown company in China. The Kai blades made in Japan.

Which one blade
Are you referring to ??


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Which one blade
Are you referring to  ??


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The first picture is the Oneblade carbon made in China. The second picture is a Kai made in Japan. This blade is carbon and uncoated.

OneBlade razors are designed to accept proprietary Feather FHS-10 blades.  As stated above, these blades are stainless steel.  They are still offered and in stock on eBay, Etsy, and at other vendors, including two of my favorite domestic (USA) artisans.  OneBlade still offers the the stainless blades too, both directly and via Amazon.  They come in packs of 10, and the few current prices I checked are about $9.60, or about 96¢ per blade.  You can save a bit if you buy in bulk.  At 96¢, the stainless blades are 33¢ higher per blade than the 63¢ carbon steel blades ($18.95/30 = 63¢).

I'm pretty well fixed for blades at the moment, but even if I had only a few blades on hand, I would not buy carbon steel alternatives while the stainless blades can still be had - unless was curious to try the carbon, or I just wanted the satisfaction of figuring out a solution, as Tedolph mentioned.  In my case, I might grow curious enough to try the carbon, treating each blade as a one-and-done.  I know that's expensive, but like many guys, I usually can get only one really good shave out of a stainless FHS-10 blade too.  Some of you seem to get more shaves than that, and my hat is off to you.  For me, the one shave I get is good enough so that I just accept the expense.

Finally, using nibbled, despined GEMs is an alternative.  If you have a V1 OneBlade, you can skip the nibbling.  The modified GEMs are not hard to prepare, and even if you have to buy a nibbler, modified GEMs are super economic because GEMs are cheap, and they last for many shaves.   A google search on "GEM nibble OneBlade" will turn up enough forum chatter to get you on your way.

Just to add a little to HighSpeed s excellent discussion, with one caveat-I am not sure that what I am about to say is historically accurate as it is based on hearsay from a long time ago and I don't fully trust my memory. Anyway, as I understand it, Feather in Japan bought the tooling for the old single edge Valet Auto Strop (VAS) razors and carbon steel blades. Feather made the razors for a short time. This might have been in the 40's or 50's? Then, when stainless steel blades became the standard, Feather started making the FHS stainless steel blades but continued with the carbon steel for everybody that still had VAS razors and their strops. The VAS used a mechanical stropping system specifically designed for use with the carbon steel blades. Although you could fit a FHS stainless blade in the VAS, you could not effectively strop it. I have used both the FHS stainless and FAS carbon steel blades. The FHS are sharper and smoother, but after you have done one or two shaves with the carbon steel FAS blades and run them through the stropping process they get sharper and tug less, but are never quite as good as a fresh FHS stainless steel blades. But, the FAS carbon steel blades last forever as longs as you strop them after each shave (on the rough side of the strop) to dry the edge, and again (on the smooth side of the strop) to re-align the edge before each shave.

So you have a trade off: use a 60 cent blade that might last for 40-50 shaves but it will tug a bit ATG, or a 90 cent blade that is very sharp but only good for 4-5 shaves and can't be stropped.

One Blade designed their modern razors to use the Feather SE FHS blade. I had the el cheapo CORE all plastic razor (there were a couple of versions, I have V2) and thought that it worked great with the FHS blade. I gave it away to someone who needed a decent razor and replaced it with a Hybrid design that has a plastic handle but a stainless steel head. It is slightly more aggressive than the all plastic CORE. Both offer a very rapid, cartridge like shave because they have a spring loaded, pivoting head. So, if you are in a big hurry you can do a single ATG pass and be good to go out to dinner, etc.

One downside (for me) is that all the One Blade razors are closed comb. I prefer the more definite blade feel of my open comb, vintage Valet Auto Strop. Unfortunately, I can't use the FAS carbon steel blades because my strop disintegrated a long time ago.