Does Derby Extra Pair With the Vector 316L?

Vector 316L × Derby Extra pairing data — three shaves on one physical razor and one blade. The pairing averaged 42.0/50 over a 43 / 42 / 41 run, and all three steps went the same way. The third use is where the compatibility picture changes: the with-the-grain pass still cut, while the against-the-grain description moved from blade feel to tugging and smoothness gave back the series’ only point.

Conducted by one ORMIXA tester (one skin profile) using the same razor, soap, brush and pass pattern across the series. Session data follows the published compatibility-test rubric.

The test question is narrow: how does the photographed Derby Extra blade behave in the 0.76 mm-gap Vector 316L under one fixed two-pass routine? Across the recorded window the pairing gave back one point at each step while every session still finished at SS with no nicks. This entry joins the Vector Blade Compatibility Database.

Blade Identification: What the Pack Actually Shows

Everything in this section comes off the photographs of the tested unit and nothing else. The box front reads DERBY, EXTRA, SUPER STAINLESS, DOUBLE EDGE and 5 BLADES, with a footer line printed CHROMIUM-CERAMIC / PLATINUM TUNGSTEN POLYMER / COATED EDGES. The loose blade is stamped DERBY EXTRA, PASLANMAZ ÇELİK and the numerals 1 and 2. A pack count of five is confirmed by the box itself. Those printed words are recorded as printed words; no coating construction is inferred from them.

One boundary matters more here than on any previous entry in this database. The tested unit is a standalone five-blade retail box supplied without an outer carton, and no panel on the photographed material carries a country of origin, a manufacturer, a distributor or a corporate brand owner. This article therefore states none of them.

PASLANMAZ ÇELİK is Turkish for stainless steel. It is logged here as a language observation about a stamp, and it carries no origin claim, which is why no country appears anywhere in this record. The earlier Feather entry in this database had an explicit origin string stamped on the blade and still kept that string off the packaging attribution; this pack has no origin string at all, so the boundary sits one step further back.

Test Conditions

• Tester: ORMIXA — one skin profile, fixed rubric
• Razor: ORMIXA Vector 316L stainless, 0.76 mm gap
• Bowl: ORMIXA Titanium Shaving Bowl, Double-Wall Lather Bowl — Silver
• Soap: Proraso Shaving Soap in a Bowl — Sensitive (green tea & oatmeal), bowl-lathered
• Brush: ORMIXA Harbor — TA2 Titanium Line, Gradient Crystalline handle, 26 mm Two Band Badger
• Preparation: no hot-water face wash; no pre-shave oil; brush soaked in tap water for about 1 minute
• Pass pattern: WTG → ATG; XTG skipped; target SS, not BBS
• Post-shave: alum block, followed at 30 minutes and 4 hours
• Intervals: 96h opening interval, then 72h and 72h
• Room conditions: 28 °C / 85% RH in all three sessions

Test Period Summary

Three uses of the same blade were logged from 31 July to 6 August 2026. Each session ran the same WTG → ATG pattern and deliberately skipped XTG, so the run measures a stable SS-target routine. A BBS attempt and a maximum-lifespan test sit outside this record.

Five-Axis Scores

Average: 42.0/50. Touch was SS in all three sessions. Closeness is normalized to 7 so the numeric score agrees with the SS touch result and the no-XTG, non-BBS protocol; the correction is logged in the source record and score lock. The other four axes keep the values recorded at the time of each shave. Two of them moved: irritation at Shave 2 and smoothness at Shave 3.

Blood Points and Alum Response

The two irritation inputs behind those scores moved in opposite directions across the run:

Five weepers and zero nicks across three sessions. The weeper count ran 2 → 3 → 0 while the alum reading widened from one region to three. The zero-weeper session and the widest alum session are the same session, so a blank weeper row reads as a pass-and-region outcome rather than as evidence that the third use was the gentlest. The 4-hour follow-up listed the neck alone in all three sessions.

Day-by-Day

Shave 1 (2026-07-31, 96h since the previous shave)

The first blade out of this pack read as sharp from the opening stroke. WTG cut cleanly and no part of the face produced drag. XTG was skipped because BBS sat outside the protocol, and ATG carried a light blade feel through both passes.

Two weepers appeared on the neck. No difficult-area events were logged at the jawline, neck, upper lip or Adam’s apple, meaning no region needed repeat strokes or resisted the pass. Zero nicks. Alum stung at the neck and stayed mild across the rest of the face. Skin read as fresh at 30 minutes and fully relaxed at 4 hours, with the neck the single entry in the residual-irritation field.

Touch: SS. Scores: Closeness 7 / Smoothness 9 / Irritation 9 / Audible 9 / Lather 9.

Shave 2 (2026-08-03, 72h growth)

The second use opened with the edge still sharp, and WTG stayed decisive. ATG again read as blade feel, the same description Shave 1 carried. This session also holds the one deliberate technique change in the series: stroke length was shortened on purpose, and the session was recorded as the more comfortable of the two so far.

The logged numbers moved against that impression. Irritation fell from 9 to 8 and the weeper count rose from two to three — one on the chin and two on the neck. Zero nicks. Alum stung at the chin as well as the neck, one region wider than Shave 1. The 30-minute and 4-hour follow-ups repeated Shave 1: fresh, then fully relaxed, with the neck the only residual entry.

Because a technique change and the blade’s own state moved together inside this session, nothing recorded in Shave 2 is attributable to blade state alone. It is written up here as the series’ known confound and treated that way in every conclusion below.

Touch: SS. Scores: Closeness 7 / Smoothness 9 / Irritation 8 / Audible 9 / Lather 9.

Shave 3 (2026-08-06, 72h growth)

The third use kept the with-the-grain pass intact: cutting still completed without a stall, and audible feedback held the value it carried in the first two sessions. The change landed on the return pass. Shaves 1 and 2 both described ATG as blade feel; this session described it as tugging, the first time that word appears in the series. Smoothness moved from 9 to 8 in the same session, its only movement of the run.

The session produced zero weepers and zero nicks. The immediate alum response was the widest of the three, covering cheek, chin and neck, while the 4-hour follow-up returned to the neck alone and matched the two earlier sessions. Skin read as fresh at 30 minutes and fully relaxed at 4 hours.

Touch: SS. Scores: Closeness 7 / Smoothness 8 / Irritation 8 / Audible 9 / Lather 9.

What Worked in the Pairing

Zero nicks across six passes

Three sessions of WTG → ATG produced six passes and not one nick, including the session where the return-pass description changed. Every session also closed at SS touch. Whatever narrowed by Shave 3 left the pairing inside its usable band for the whole recorded window.

Audible feedback and lather held flat

Audible feedback scored 9 and lather compatibility scored 9 in all three sessions, with the soap, brush and bowl held constant throughout. Two of the five axes therefore contribute nothing to the decline, which narrows the search for what moved to smoothness and irritation.

The with-the-grain pass never stalled

WTG cut in all three sessions, and the Shave 3 log records it still cutting on the same day the ATG complaint changed. In this pairing the first sign of a narrowing window showed up on the return pass while the conservative direction was still clean.

Friction Points in the Pairing

One point at each step, all in the same direction

The totals ran 43 → 42 → 41. Each step is a single point and each step is downward, which separates this run from the flat curves elsewhere in the database. The point at Shave 2 came off irritation; the point at Shave 3 came off smoothness.

The ATG description changes at Shave 3

Tugging is a different report from blade feel, and it arrives in the same session as the smoothness point and the third downward step. Three lines of the record land together on the third use, which is why this article places the near edge of the comfort window there.

The record stops at that point. A single razor across three uses cannot separate edge condition from head geometry or from session-to-session technique, so what is published is the position of the window edge, not a mechanism behind it.

Shave 2 cannot be attributed to the blade

Stroke length was deliberately shortened in Shave 2 and the session was reported as milder, while irritation moved 9 → 8 and weepers moved 2 → 3. The subjective and recorded readings point opposite ways and both are kept as logged. With technique and blade state moving in the same session, Shave 2 supports no blade-side conclusion on its own.

The weeper count runs against the score curve

Weepers went 2 → 3 → 0 across a run whose totals only fell. That non-monotonic shape tracks the pass being worked and the facial region rather than edge decay, the same reading applied to the Feather entry’s 5 → 2 → 3 count. The zero-weeper third session also produced the widest immediate alum response of the run, so it is excluded as evidence of a milder third use.

The protocol does not answer a BBS question

All three sessions intentionally skipped XTG and logged SS touch. A BBS-target routine would add a pass and change exposure, pressure and irritation risk, so maximum closeness cannot be inferred from this dataset.

Difficult Areas

• Jaw / jawline: no pass-level difficulty logged in any session; no weepers and no alum entry recorded here.
• Neck: no pass-level difficulty logged; four of the five weepers landed here (two in Shave 1, two in Shave 2), and it is the only region that stung at alum in all three sessions and the only entry in every 4-hour follow-up.
• Upper lip / under the nose: no pass-level difficulty logged; no weepers and no alum entry across the three sessions.
• Adam’s apple / under the chin: no pass-level difficulty logged; the chin produced one weeper in Shave 2 and registered alum stinging in Shaves 2 and 3.

The source record marks all four regions as free of difficulty, which here means no region resisted the pass or needed repeat strokes. Blood points and alum readings are logged separately because they describe a different thing: where skin reacted, rather than where the pass was hard to complete. The cheek appears once, in the Shave 3 immediate alum reading.

Pairing Recommendation for Vector 316L Owners

Under the logged conditions, the Vector 316L × Derby Extra pairing suits a Vector owner running a settled two-pass routine who treats the third use as the session to watch. Shaves 1 and 2 posted the run’s two best totals with zero nicks, a clean with-the-grain pass and an SS finish, and the third use still completed both passes at SS with no blood points at all.

Set against that is a run that gave back a point at each step: smoothness down a point at Shave 3, and a return-pass description that changed in the same session. A Vector owner whose priority is an unchanging feel from first use to last will find the flat-curve pairings in this database a closer match.

The data does not establish how this blade behaves in a different razor, during a three-pass BBS routine, or past Shave 3. It also does not isolate whether the Shave 3 change belongs to the edge, to the 0.76 mm head geometry or to the technique used across these sessions. Each of those needs a run of its own to answer.

Video Evidence

Three unedited session records:

• Shave 1 of 3: youtu.be/NcucmlBuQns
• Shave 2 of 3: youtu.be/1ErQlh2FW04
• Shave 3 of 3: youtu.be/DObJ71x8Wqc

Cross-Pairing Reference

Current Vector × DE-blade pairing scores, averaged across the same five axes:

The Feather Hi-Stainless row is the useful contrast. That run returned the same score on all five axes in all three sessions and was read as sitting entirely inside its window with the endpoint unmeasured. This run gives back a point per session and its third use carries the first tugging entry, which is why the window language here is tighter. That article carries its own conditions and should be read in place.

Every row used a Vector razor and the same Proraso Sensitive soap, but the material variant, brush setup and growth interval differ per row. The table is a pairing reference rather than a controlled ranking of loose blades.

→ Full Vector Blade Compatibility Database

Methodology Notes

• Attribution — window edge located, mechanism not isolated: three lines of the record land on Shave 3 (the total steps 43 → 42 → 41, smoothness moves 9 → 8 for its only time, and the ATG description changes from blade feel to tugging). The three-option framework this database uses (A = the blade’s own edge life, B = razor geometry amplifying the curve, C = technique variation) cannot be formally separated by a single-razor, three-use run, and this series carries an explicit C-type event in Shave 2. What the record supports is a comfort window that begins to narrow at the third use.
• Closeness normalization: the submitted notes paired closeness scores of 10 / 10 / 10 with SS touch, no XTG and an explicit non-BBS target. Under the published anchor, SS corresponds to 6–7; closeness is locked at 7 / 7 / 7 so the numeric and tactile records agree. All other submitted axis scores are preserved.
• Shave 2 technique confound: stroke length was deliberately shortened and the session was reported as milder, while irritation moved 9 → 8 and weepers moved 2 → 3. Both readings are published as logged and neither overwrites the other. The divergence is the reason no Shave 2 change is attributed to blade state.
• Shave 3 record corrections: the cumulative-use field read 2/3 against its own 72-hour timeline and is recorded as 3/3. The session’s opening-impression line arrived word-for-word identical to Shave 2 and is treated as a copy-paste remnant, so the write-up above carries the session’s actual new entry — the ATG description changing to tugging, alongside the smoothness point.
• Alum reading for Shave 3: the immediate response is logged as cheek, chin and neck while the same session’s 4-hour follow-up lists the neck alone. Both lines come from one log and are published as a wider immediate reaction with a neck-only residual.
• Identification boundary: the tested unit is a standalone five-blade retail box supplied without an outer carton. No photographed panel carries an origin, manufacturer, distributor or brand-owner face, so none is assigned. The Turkish-language stamp on the blade is recorded as printed text and supports no origin claim.
• No lifespan endpoint: three shaves were completed and the third still logged SS touch with zero nicks. That supports a three-use window whose comfort begins to narrow at the end of it, and it supports no claim about how many shaves this blade delivers.

Pairing Verdict

After three shaves, the Vector 316L × Derby Extra pairing closes at 42.0/50 — comfortable across the whole observed window, with the near edge of that window visible at the third use.

The evidence for the comfort is the part of the record that held: zero nicks over six passes, SS touch in every session, and closeness, audible feedback and lather steady from the first use to the last. The evidence for the narrowing is the part that moved: one point off the total at each step, smoothness giving back its only point at Shave 3, and the return-pass description changing to tugging in that same session. Three uses is where the record ends, and the claim ends there too.

Sources

• American Academy of Dermatology — How to shave (shave with the grain; shave lightly to prevent nicks; change blades after 5–7 shaves)
• Cleveland Clinic — Razor Burn (friction and dull blades among the causes of shaving irritation)
• scienceofsharp — Quantifying Sharp (blade-edge apex width and bevel-angle metallurgy)
• ORMIXA blade-test shave logs — one skin profile, fixed rubric; method in the blade compatibility test methodology

Disclosure

Internal pairing test. Not sponsored. ORMIXA has no commercial relationship with Derby or the blade vendor and does not sell this blade. The documented pack is a retail pack purchased for evaluation and is described only from the supplied evidence; origin, manufacturer and corporate brand owner are not established by the available material.

ORMIXA products are sold by ECE Innovate Homes LLC and manufactured by Guangzhou Yanyang Technology Co., Ltd. under trademark license.

Manufacturer-conducted testing has an inherent perspective. To keep the evidence inspectable, every session video is linked above, corrections are logged in the normalized source file, and the same five-axis rubric is used across the database.

Related

• ← Full Vector Blade Compatibility Database
• The flat-curve contrast — Vector 316L × Feather Hi-Stainless →
• The razor used in this test — Vector 316L →