I may be lazy, but I also do not want to eff up my face experimenting. I got lucky with Voskod blades several years ago finding that they were cheap and easy on my face. Half way through my 100 pack of Voskod blades I also got a 100 pack of feather blades. I found that the Voskod were nicer to my face, and felt better on the 2nd and 3rd use compared with feather. Though, I will admit that feather blades seem to work better when I have overgrown my beard and the blade is brand new.
For several reasons, including the fact that I do not see Voskod blades easily obtainable, I want to replace them with something that feels similar. I would prefer the blades to not be made in Russia, not to be coated in teflon, and to cost less than feather blades.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Yeah, it can be pretty tough to pin down exact details about some blades. I’ve often seen details on a single blade vary from shop to shop, forum thread to forum thread. It’s part of why I don’t feel confident enough to say for certain what blade has PTFE or not.
As for the safety of PTFE, it is used for many medical purposes, including arterial grafts; that’s about as close to the bloodstream as you can get. PTFE can give off harmful gasses at high temperatures, but it’s stable up to 260 °C (500 °F) so as long as you don’t run the tap too hot and you’ll be fine 🤣
There’s one blogger out there who does in depth blade reviews and tries to objectively measure each blades sharpness (annoyingly I can’t find his site anymore), but at the end of the day no matter what a review says each blade is going to perform different for each person depending on their face, skill, razor, and 100 other variables.
My first double edge razor blades were Derby’s and I found them to be an excellent starter blade; very forgiving of bad technique. I’ve still got a few packs of them and keep meaning to go back and revisit them after a few years of learning and practice.
refinedshaving was the site you are perhaps referring to. The website has shutdown now but regardless it is a bit outdated now since a lot has changed since those tests were done.