Quote Originally Posted by mparker762 View Post
I have a razor that IIRC is 8 1/2 degrees and that's definitely too narrow of an angle, at least for that particular steel and temper. It hones up beautifully and takes an absolutely wicked edge that can't survive even one shave. I'm not talking microchips either, but visible-to-the-naked-eye sized chips, and I once saw a piece that tore and folded over. One of these weeks I should work my way up through increasing tape layers and see where it starts behaving; that would provide an interesting data point for where the low end really is...

Isn't there a video on youtube of some guy shaving with an axe? Probably not something you want to do every morning, but clearly this isn't nearly so precise a science as we would like to believe.
That would be EXCELLENT!!

John Juranitch shaved with an axe to prove that anything made of hardened steel can be sharpened to a shaving edge. People still don't buy it.

...a rose by any other name, apparently, stinks.