Thread: Fin: fact or fiction?

Originally Posted by poona

If anyone has access to an EM then please by all means, put this to bed one way or another. lol :-)

Or are we suffering from a severe bout of ANALYSIS PARALYSIS?

+1 Its time for some one with the means necessary to settle this for once and for all! With pics of course! I personally believe in the perfect V......but I would be inclined to change my razor dogma as needed to conform with known facts!

Doesn't there have to be an impending action for there to be a paralysis? Once we prove the existence or lack of a fin is anyone going to change what they do?

Originally Posted by AFDavis11

Doesn't there have to be an impending action for there to be a paralysis? Once we prove the existence or lack of a fin is anyone going to change what they do?

Exactly.

We need a "Full of hot air" forum for discussions such as this....

.....please disregard or mods remove

Originally Posted by AFDavis11

Doesn't there have to be an impending action for there to be a paralysis? Once we prove the existence or lack of a fin is anyone going to change what they do?

Well, yes . It won't be offered up as an explanation any more.

Originally Posted by AFDavis11

I also think we have to be careful and remember that everything we don't understand isn't "magic". Just because we don't get something doesn't make it "magic". We really aren't as smart as we think and we also don't have to act like straight razors users are witch doctors. I think we spend a lot of time stumbling onto great edges that shave. That doesn't make us experts at this art. Scientifically, we should all be open to our own ignorance, despite the fact that we feel so confident in our mastery.

True. We should also refrain from conjuring up things to explain something we can't otherwise. I do believe steel and edges fall more in the physical realm than the spiritual (although there is a spiritual component to the act of shaving with a straight razor )

Originally Posted by Quick

...although there is a spiritual component...

and that's why this thread is in the advanced honing section,no doubt!

I didn't vote. The existence of the undefined term "fin" cannot be trued or falsified by an election.

There are empirical facts:
Fact 1.
I have been honing exclusively with hones for quite some time (I'm not opposed to pastes as such, but I'm not using them for now). After my honing, I always perform the HHT. Regardless the value of that test for predicting shaveability, the HHT always improves after I strop the razor on clean leather. Stropping does something with the edge, that makes it sever a hair better. It requires a certain amount of stropping, but after that, more stropping doesn't make a difference.

Fact 2.
Stropping a used razor, repairs something at the edge, that got lost during the previous shave.
I oil my razors after each shave, so this can't be about removing corrosion.

This causes me to speculate that there's a small part of the edge, that can be influenced by the kind of draw and friction provided by a leather strop.
I extracted a picture out of Verhoeven's paper and would like to cite it, with reference to the original article (http://mse.iastate.edu/fileadmin/www...nifeShExps.pdf)


Both right pictures show a bur-like part at the very edge, that looks like silver lining.
It is a picture of a straight razor's edge. Verhoeven reports it was honed and stropped by one Mr. William Dauksch, a long-time straight razor user. He also reports that the edge showed some roughness on higher magnification pictures that are not included in his document. As we can see at the far right picture, and I believe also in the left (3000X) picture, it was not the very best stropping job. Part of the edge is a bit fold over, and the alignment (in the left picture) is not excellent.
Even so, I would like to define the part of the edge, that can be affected by stropping as the "fin". I have used the word "fin" in that meaning in some of my recent posts. I have been speculating that the "fin" part of the edge exists of steel that has underwent some alterations to the original hardness and structure of the steel, which influences the longevity and "stroppability" of the razor. There are scientific studies that point in that direction.

With regular knife and tool sharpening, we usually hone till a bur grows so large that it starts folding over, and we can feel it to the touch. Then we hone the other side, and finalize the sharpening session by dealing in some way with that bur. While honing straight razors, we flip the razor with each stroke. That keeps the bur small, but not non-existent.

In my opinion, that bur, aligned in the right direction to be part of the edge, is " the fin".
In that respect, I agree with many things presented in this thread by Afdavis and English.

Bart.

Depends on how you're envisioning the "fin". I think you're implying that the "fin" section of the edge has less of an angle than the main portion of the bevel (the "Y" shape"). Consider that the "fin" in the pictures may have MORE of an angle than the main portion of the bevel.

1) Surely there is some abrasive quality to a strop. There is *some* abrasive quality to any material. Couldn't you explain the pictures just as well by speculating that the fine silvery edge you see is simply a "double bevel" created by stropping? The leather strop being supple would be deflected a bit by the edge and have more of an angle than the more rigid surface of the hone. The angle of the "fin" would be greater in that case.

2) The bevel will have decreasing "structural capacity" (<-- descriptive term) as the cross section narrows moving towards the edge. Cutting hairs and just running the blade across your skin will do some damage. Stropping it (see 1. above) could repair this to some extent.

I believe everyone is using the term "fin" to describe some portion of the edge that has significantly less angle than the bevel. The "Y" shape. Some flexible/floppy flat piece of steel extending significantly further from the edge than the point where the two sides of the bevel would meet. I'm not buying it.

I didn't vote because I have a problem with the terminology (sorta').
If the poll was reworded to this:

Burrs: Fact or Fiction? (public results poll)

• Micro-burrs are real and serve a purpose
• Micro-burrs are BS

...I would have picked door #1.

I believe that no matter how light your honing stroke is (assuming both bevels meet), you will form a micro-burr on the side opposite to your hone. I have no idea if this burr survives being stropped. I tend to think that it very well might. Or, even if it doesn't, is the strop re-applying a micro-burr at every stroke? Or just bending one back and forth?

A wire edge is an uneven burr that digs in and grabs unevenly. Maybe it's really a nice, consistent, more unbroken micro-burr (i.e. "fin") that passes the TPT when it grabs the meat so evenly.

Certainly is neat to debate and wonder about. Either way, I agree that the real answer won't change my honing much.