Oster Blade Size Mystery
by Zube (zube@stat.colostate.edu)  
Created:  Feb 16, 2010
Updated:  Feb 16, 2010
http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~zube/oster.txt

My wife and I bought an Oster 76 clipper from http://www.bestclippers.com/
some years ago.  We also bought a couple of blades.

The Oster USA blade my wife uses to cut my hair reads "3.0mm" and "size
1".  Recently, we started looking for something a bit shorter so that
she wouldn't have to cut my hair as often.

Curiously, when I went looking for the next size down (0A), it was
quite a jump (1.2mm).  That seemed odd, so I looked at other sizes and
discovered that a "1" was now 2.4mm.

That was seriously odd.  I would not expect clipper blade standards to
change much, if ever.  Standards aren't fashions.

I mailed the bestclippers people and they said they didn't think the
standards had changed for at least 4-6 years.  They also gave me a toll-
free number (800-339-2547) for Oster.  I called Oster and had a nice
chat with a lady who claimed that the standards had been the same for
at least 15 years.  We also compared some numbers from her chart and
the numbers on my blades.  Some numbers matched, others didn't.

It turns out that there appear to be at least two types of Oster 76
blades.  If the blade has a honkin' big number on the front, like my 2
blade does, it matches the length of what is currently being sold.
However, if the blade instead has a description in smaller type such as
"size 1" or "size 3 1/2", then it does not.

Here are the differences I know about:

"000"   -- 0.5mm     "size 000"   -- 0.25mm 
"1"     -- 2.4mm     "size 1"     -- 3.0mm
"3 1/2" -- 9.5mm     "size 3 1/2" -- 9.0mm

Why the differences?  I can only speculate.

It's possible that the "size" versions are for some international
standard, not the US standard, although that would not explain why I
have them.  The nice lady from Oster hinted at this, but could not
point to anything definite.

Even thought the blades read "Oster USA", it's possible that they are
counterfeit, but it seems unlikely.  Why counterfeit something and
make it noticeably different?  Even if the counterfeiters couldn't 
engrave a large number on the blade, why make the size different?
It makes no sense.

So I'm left with an unsolved, but partially documented mystery.  If
anyone has any information to add, please mail me.