Thread: Verhoeven Paper Question

Originally Posted by honedright

Per Seraphim's Dovo review thread, the 500x photo revealing a serrated edge is of a "smooth" shaving razor.

I'm certainly not disputing that.

Originally Posted by honedright

Without going back and reading Verhoeven's work, did anyone actually shave with the razors he photographed? And if so, what was the quality?

Verhoeven only photographed one razor, owned, honed and stropped by one Mr. William Dauksch that had "several decades" straight razor experience. He compared the edges to commercial Gillette blades and found them "close" to those standards, although a litlle bit rougher at extremely high magnification, of which he published no pictures. He did publish 800X pictures that shows a very straight and undisturbed edge.
The experiments he did on water hones and leather were all conducted with standard stainless steel razor blades, that were put in a fixture for consistent honing angle. He compared images and measured the final width of the bevel tip. He doesn't report any shaving tests with those blades. I think it's safe to assume that he probably considered such shave tests far too subjective and influenced by other factors, to base scientific conclusions upon.

In commercial blades, Verhoeven found: "Edge widths of 0.3 to 0.5 microns, edge straightness of essentially straight line quality, little to no edge roughness as viewed from the side, and a very good face smoothness."

Bart.