Quote Originally Posted by Seraphim View Post
Esteemed colleageus and research associates,

OK, so here is a thread about my new razor: Wustof 5/8

I have pics of the edge at 200x coming right off the 1um diamond lapping film (honed straight up and down, dry).

Then the same edge after 15 laps on a lightly coated chrome ox hanging strop (stropped at an angle)
and then stropped on new TM "smooth" cavas and latigo (straight up and down, as it is a 3" strop, I also mistakenly called it "linen" for some sleep deprived reason...? It's truly canvas).

As can be seen, the bevel has been rounded/smoothed out significantly, and striations are visible in a diagonal direction.

So, the abrasion was carried out by the chrome ox (as per the diagonal striations), and there is little or no visual evidence of what the subsequent canvas and latigo stropping did to the edge. However, perhaps they contribute to simply smoothing out the striations that are there.

As I stated in that post, next time I'll skip the chrome ox and see what canvas and latigo do by themselves.

Nice thread & discussion, thanks guys!
Nice pictures. I can clearly see that irregularities in the honed edge (almost look like tiny chips) are nearly all smoothed out. I can't quite decide whether the rounding over effect is essentially reducing the angle
or is it just thinning it out. eventually though it would seem to lead to less supportive material at the near edge steel.
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Plastic flow = bending that I can understand. The monkey wrench effect of sharpening razors lies for me at least in their extreme flexibility. I feel myself using too much pressure while stropping yet appear powerless to stop. I sure have lightened up on the hones, though still I may be a bit heavy.

I think in back stropping on paste there would be far less material to be deposited as compared to 8g stone. I wonder how much effect or difference there is back honing wet vs dry

fwiw In the experiments on flat hones the blade was flipped and the opposite face honed 1/1 pass on each face.