Originally Posted by
Mike Blue
And to include Zephyr's comment about simplifying production... both answers are yes. Once of the first items a blademaker would notice is the lack of weight at the spine. This allows a thinner blade to be useful for shaving because the softer/harder tubing/spring device allows the correct angle for honing when the spine of the blade will not deliver it. It's also much easier to do a flat grind on a thin piece so there would be no need for a variety of diameters to get the hollow grinding right. Less tooling equals money savings on the factory floor and in speed of production.
That might also translate into a lighter razor and tailor to the end-user's preference but that's a guess on my part. It would be useful to see some company advertising to know if they used it that way.
From a simple production perspective, a thinner piece of steel means that less of the good steel is wasted on non-cutting edge parts of the blade. With a thin spine being supported by a much less expensive piece of support material, potentially means more per volume per pound steel available for making more razors and more profit for the company. Each element of production savings means more at the bottom line.
Other ideas that free float in my head this morning are that it may be possible to adjust the spine support to help recover from some edge warpage. A straight spine tube or spring would provide a guide to correct a problem like that if the razor was then "adjustable" to good enough. Less razors tossed in the scrap means more sold out the door.
Hopefully these are useful suppositions..