Thread: I use pastes...

Lt. you can normally see serrations at 10X?

Bart I have already made a set of curved balsa strops, hrmmm only thing is they are 3x3 inch or so.
(sorry to keep mentioning those delightful little devils)

they use the natural cup of the board, perpendicular to the edge they are pretty flat. I don't think it is the concavity of the strop, but the pressure that you are noticing the difference- make it tight with pressure and loose with a light touch an I believe you find the pressured edge sharper. Don't go a put your shoulders into to prove me wrong. with a loose loom and pressure i would assume the pressure was not too much or the strop would have rolled up and dubbed the edge(i think)

A convex bevel, Moran edge, katana hiraniku, blended bevel/ whatever you want to call it is not by geometric principle sharper than a thin flat bevel. The following statement is not meant to be all inclusive...but, typically the use of convex bevel is intended to strengthen the edge by putting a little more meat down low as compared to typically flat. Both could theorectically meet a zero edge dimension only the conves blade has an increased cutting angle.

A good comparioson might be to put finest paste on a hard surface and see how that compares to a pasted (soft substrate leather) strop.

Seraphim you use 0.1 micron? How does it compare to 0.25? Is the edge durable enough to get a weeks worth of shaves out of a good blade. With the 0.25 I get about 7 days with my beard and then my shaves become "GOOD" not my usual "GREAT". I am at a crossroads here and was hoping to come up with a stone that would be as good as the 0.25 paste but I know deep down that it will probably never happen. I strop about 100 times off the 0.25 paste and it just gives me such kickin shaves that I can't see that off a stone. When I do the math there is just no stone that comes close to the 0.25 grit. I was hoping that it is just more than math.

Thanks,
Richard

I have 0.1 micron, you can see the result in post #96 of the thread I posted above.

The bevel edges are quite shiny, but the actual edge is less than impressive. it had some chipping, and also is pretty wavy (that isn't really visible in that pic). I believe this is because the edge got too thinned out by going all the way out to 0.1um on a flat hone (or in my case lapping film on precision granite plate).

My next test will be to put a couple of sheets of paper behing the lapping film for some cushion for the effect seen here


We'll see how it goes

I haven't done much with the paper backed lapping film.

However I did finally manage to get a decent pic of the slight edge rounding going on with the Crome Ox hanging strop.

First image:
Otto Busch Worldmaster 200x, you can see how the lighting has highlighted the slight rounding of the edge

Second pic is the edge at 1000x
It shows that the edge may be rounded in realtion to the rest of the bevel, but the actual cutting edge is still sharp as can be.

Yeah, it's a nice shaver!