Thread: Paper testing razors

Originally Posted by bigeasy1

No quote. General answer to the last several posts.

I will not attempt to argue the point of paper cutting. Obviously regular readers here will never accept the possibility of his being acceptable, long enough to learn to use it. It makes no difference to me if you only have a lot of different tests that only test at specific points. That said, You may want to consider what you are looking at in the previous post, and compare it to your own 200x pictures. These most recent pictures are 25X more magnified. Where are the striations? Even a strop would have left more than are in this picture. You are looking at a rolled edge approx. .0001 mm wide, across the roll .005 mm will comfortably shave your face. Check the 0's. It means nothing without the before picture and a picture from after just 1 shave. And as everyone here has already accepted, a magnified picture will not tell what will shave well, only the shave will do that. I saw a study done with numerous electron microscope pictures and explanations some time back, including actual measurements. The study showed pictures taken at different stages of finishing an edge. One outcome of the study was pronounced to indicate that stropping on leather has no benefit. You all believe that don't you? The proof is in the pudding. Anyone not willing to bake the pudding will never find the proof. Nothing I can say, or pictures I can show, will change that.
Cheers,

OK now that's just insulting. Because someone regularly reads this message board it makes them a closed-minded pinhead?

As far as your other points, first, there are striations visible on that razor, they are just very shallow. If you had followed the link and read a moment you'd have seen that the razor in question was honed on a 16k Shapton, then a pasted hanging leather strop was used with .5 micron diamond abrasive. 1 micron is .001mm, so we're talking diamond particles that are .0005mm in diameter. On hanging leather which lets the particles push away rather than cut deeply. How on earth are you expecting to see deep striations?

Second, there is no way in hell you are going to shave comfortably with a .005mm (5 micron!) apex width on a razor. Average comfortable shaving width for a razor apex that I've seen bandied about is under .5 micron, or .0005mm.

Third, of course bare leather stropping does something. It aligns and straightens the edge/apex and removes burrs. Enough laps can start to burnish slightly, but isn't going to make large structural changes to an edge. If you are seeing something like that when stropping then you likely have contamination on your strop.

The general point here is that cutting paper with a finished edge (shave-ready) razor will damage the edge. Will it damage the edge more than a shave? Maybe, maybe not. But why would you want to start your first shave with a fresh honed razor with an edge that has been damaged enough to where it might as well be your second shave or more? Personally I'd prefer to let that damage occur during the shaves, not prior to them.