#11 blade quality issues, a rant.

[John Wagenseil]

A few years ago I was browsing an art supply store and splurged on a box of #11 blades made by the American Safety Razor Company in Virginia.

They are extremely sharp, hold their edge for a long time, and I had never broken off one of their tips in my cutting pad. Just honing the edge made them last even longer.

Last night I replaced one of the ASRC blades with a no name from a tube of blades from my tool box.
Its awfull, I went from slicing through paper to ripping paper. I suspect the blade is from an order of Chinese no names that I purchased a long time ago. Even sharpening with a diamond plate and honing do not help these blades , they cannot hold an edge for more than a few cuts. They are barely up to cutting paper.
This really brought the difference in quality between blades to my attention, and how much a decent quality blade contributes to enjoyment of paper modeling.
The Chinese import blades are no bargain, they do not do their intended purpose very well, yet they have driven almost all domestic manufacturers of decent quality blades off the market.

There was a previous thread about a perception that new xacto brand blades from China are not the same quality as the old domestically manufactured blades. I cannot address that issue, but I did compare a current xacto blade to an ASRC blade, and my impression is that the import Xactos do not cut as well and are easier to break than the ASRC #11 blade.

Companies have taken advantage of cheap Chinese manufacturing to give their profit margins a boost, at the cost of supplying a crummy product. Manufacturing a decent #11 bade is not a huge secret, 40 years ago, a lot of American , British, Taiwanese and Japanese (Olfa still does) companies could produce a decent piece of steel at a reasonable cost.

Today, there is no longer a middle market: for example if you are looking for a kitchen knife, your choices are limited to cheap and flimsy or very high priced from a specialty store. Finding something in the middle is getting very hard.

I went internet shopping for a new box of ASRC blades and discovered that the company had gone into bankruptcy and been bought out a couple of years ago by the Personna conglomerate.
I hope the new owners have maintained the quality of the old product and not let quality control slip.
I also found that buying bulk blades might be difficult, as many suppliers will not ship a dangerous product like a box of hobby blades to a residential address. Other items they will ship, so it is not a matter of not wanting to deal with non corporate customers, it is their fear that they could be held liable if their product was "misused". I suspect it only a matter of time before liability and other legal issues make the pursuit of most interesting or creative hobbies an impossibility.