Originally Posted by
Utopian
Oh boy.
The Science of Sharp guy, some of whose stuff needs to be taken with huge grains of salt, has some photos of a killed edge. The edges were killed on glass and the photos showed that the edges were folded over into a drastic "J" shape. When "jointing" is done along the corner of a hone, the effect may or may not be the same. I honestly don't know. It certainly is not at a "molecular level," but if jointing actually is beneficial, then I doubt if the edge is folded over in the way that it is on glass.