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08-23-2009, 10:59 PM #24
I was talking about working the mud on a stone... the mud or slurry will become finer as honing progresses... I.e. you start honing on an 8K Kitayama stone, work up a slurry and then polish on the mud, the particles in the mud will break down and give you a 12k finish... though perhaps people don't build up a slurry for razor honing?
How many sintered hones will all the grains be within a certain tolerance, unless they are manufactured? And if they were cost effective, surely they would be manufactured more often than the case 3 hones? I think we are largely in agreement though.
I have also noticed "finishers that just match..." but that's a whole other story. I once suspected it has something to do with the type of steel matching the crystalline structure of the abrasives in such a way that they can cancel to a "flat/straight" edge. This thread isn't totally accurate or fully thought through but you might like it: http://straightrazorpalace.com/basic...r-musings.html
Since, unlike knives, razors are mainly stropped on the surface of a hone using the weight of the razor, it is likely that even sharp abrasives probably do not embed much beyond the tips (though particle density per unit area would be lower so each cyrstal would ge more pressure and tend to sink in more than a smaller grit would... up to a point anyway), and at that point Utopian's idea of grinding off the tips of the peaks begins to make more sense (probably also if there is a large a skip in grit size). The pyramid honing probably also helps dislodge bits of burr or work/flow fatigued steel from the edge.
Unlike SEMs, depth of field in a light microscope is rediculously shallow, but here is a pic I did of the edge of a fresh Xacto blade...
pretty wavy there. I'm more into chip carving knives and wood and I've never done a microscopic analysis of the dynamics of various tooth shapes on the sawing, or slicing, of hair but people complain that diamond makes a razor too sharp and grabby, so maybe it makes a very fine but toothy edge that acts like a saw, while coticule makes a more gently curved scallops that are not quite so agressive at biting into hairs and thus don't pull as much?
A lot of variables to look at there, though maybe getting out some clay and experimenting with some cardboard rakes could simplify things (did you see the neat photos of sidewalk chalk another user posted?... they look a lot like what I see under my microscope so maybe chalk and various rough surfaces would also make a good model!)