Lord Platinum Class Blade with a Minimalist Shave

The question to be answered in today's shave was how does the Lord Platinum blade perform in the three-piece (UTO - unscrew to open) razor made from the Merkur 33C head (top cap and baseplate) combined with a heavier, inexpensive Chinese handle, a Frankenrazor so to speak.

A five pack of the Lord Platinum Class blades. A new one of these was used in my Frankenrazor, which is the Merkur 33C Classic top cap and baseplate paired with a heavier, inexpensive Chinese handle.

The shave process was my minimalist shave, which is as follows:

1. Cold tap-water splashes to wet beard
2. Cold tap-water soak of brush (in a re-purposed Greek-yogurt cup) while wetting beard
3. Use of my proprietary shave soap #10A, face lathered to a creamy, flat, opaque layer
4. One-pass shave using oblique against-grain strokes below jaw line, and oblique cross-grain strokes above jaw line
5. Cold tap-water rinses

I got a sufficiently-close shave with zero perceptible irritation using the Lord Platinum blade in my Frankenrazor. 

I have been somewhat critical of the Lord Platinum blade, when comparing it to my other large-inventory blades: Astra SP, Personna Blue (USA), and Dorco ST-301; I have found the Lord blade to be slightly more irritating to my sensitive skin, when used with a multi-pass shave. However, in the context of the minimalist shave, a new Lord blade is not irritating. (We will see how it holds up through the coming week's shaves in various razors.)

The larger question that I've been pondering is which of my razors is the best for my daily shaves? Since I've gone to the minimalist process, this question is still open for consideration. Previously, using a multi-pass process, I had settled on a two-razor rotation of the Frankenrazor and the Merkur 37C slant.

Tomorrow will likely be the Gillette Slim adjustable with a final-use-before-recycle-bank Astra blade to explore how it performs with the end-of-life blade and the minimalist process.

Happy shaving!