- Joined
- Monday February 9, 2015
- Location
- California
Some time ago @ShaneS kindly reached out to me asking if I wanted to give an early plastic prototype version of his Blackbird OC baseplate a try. As I had a very favorable impression of his SB version I readily accepted the offer.
Disclaimer:
This is a plastic, lightweight prototype and for that reason I will not, for obvious reasons, be able to comment on finish, durability and build quality. This will be more of a high-level impression "preview" focusing on design and shave quality (taking the prototype limitations into consideration). Phew.
So let's have a closer look at...The Blackland Blacbird OC
First impressions/Design
Ignoring the fact that it's printed in white plastic (
) the first thing one notices is of course the teeth.
Counting the end-teeth there are 12 in total which is actually fewer than you normally see on a head of this size (iKon B1: 14, Gillette DR: 14, Wolfman: 16) so I was intrigued to see how comfortable it would feel with fewer teeth supporting the blade against the skin.
There's a balance, I would assume, when designing this - between lather flow-through and face-comfort.
The second thing you may notice is that the corners have received a slight design change.
Gone are the sharp edges that some users felt were too sharp during the shave.
Personally I never had any issues with the edges but I think it's a very clever design change.
Apart from the above the rest of the design is very "Blackbird" as you can see below.
The white "Dove" next to the Blackbird for comparison.
Loaded with a blade:
I loaded a Personna blade into it, lathered up some Jabonman Rosas soap and had at it.
I typically don't shave on the weekend so it had about three days worth of stubble to deal with.
The first thing I notice is that it's a very, very efficient design. I angle the razor as I do when using it with its SB baseplate and the stubble is being cut down very close to my skin in a rather effortless way.
I complete one pass (WTG) and it was quite honestly 'enough' as I had achieved a very socially acceptable shave.
I believe I rated the Blackland SB as a 5-6 on a Gillette Slim.
I would, comparing it to that, say that the OC baseplate is more in line with a 7, maybe 8 on the Gillette Slim.
More aggressive but not quite 'barking about to bite' like, say, my King Cobra.
I feel it's hard to really assess how comfortable it is due to it being in printed plastic and that material does have more of a tendency to 'drag' a bit against your skin and not being as smooth as, say, a stainless steel baseplate would be. I would however say that adding a couple more teeth may, to me, not be a bad idea as the [at least perceived] wider gap between the teeth had a more noticeable feel against my face and I'm thinking a couple of more teeth could mitigate that feeling.
I'll be shaving with it again this week and will post the next shave report here as I don't think one shave is enough to get a complete feel for it.
Disclaimer:
This is a plastic, lightweight prototype and for that reason I will not, for obvious reasons, be able to comment on finish, durability and build quality. This will be more of a high-level impression "preview" focusing on design and shave quality (taking the prototype limitations into consideration). Phew.
So let's have a closer look at...The Blackland Blacbird OC
First impressions/Design
Ignoring the fact that it's printed in white plastic (
) the first thing one notices is of course the teeth.Counting the end-teeth there are 12 in total which is actually fewer than you normally see on a head of this size (iKon B1: 14, Gillette DR: 14, Wolfman: 16) so I was intrigued to see how comfortable it would feel with fewer teeth supporting the blade against the skin.
There's a balance, I would assume, when designing this - between lather flow-through and face-comfort.
The second thing you may notice is that the corners have received a slight design change.
Gone are the sharp edges that some users felt were too sharp during the shave.
Personally I never had any issues with the edges but I think it's a very clever design change.
Apart from the above the rest of the design is very "Blackbird" as you can see below.
The white "Dove" next to the Blackbird for comparison.
Loaded with a blade:
SHAVE REPORT 1
This morning I had my first real shaving experience with the Blackbird OC.
I loaded a Personna blade into it, lathered up some Jabonman Rosas soap and had at it.
I typically don't shave on the weekend so it had about three days worth of stubble to deal with.
The first thing I notice is that it's a very, very efficient design. I angle the razor as I do when using it with its SB baseplate and the stubble is being cut down very close to my skin in a rather effortless way.
I complete one pass (WTG) and it was quite honestly 'enough' as I had achieved a very socially acceptable shave.
I believe I rated the Blackland SB as a 5-6 on a Gillette Slim.
I would, comparing it to that, say that the OC baseplate is more in line with a 7, maybe 8 on the Gillette Slim.
More aggressive but not quite 'barking about to bite' like, say, my King Cobra.
I feel it's hard to really assess how comfortable it is due to it being in printed plastic and that material does have more of a tendency to 'drag' a bit against your skin and not being as smooth as, say, a stainless steel baseplate would be. I would however say that adding a couple more teeth may, to me, not be a bad idea as the [at least perceived] wider gap between the teeth had a more noticeable feel against my face and I'm thinking a couple of more teeth could mitigate that feeling.
I'll be shaving with it again this week and will post the next shave report here as I don't think one shave is enough to get a complete feel for it.
