Thread: My razor is too sharp???? I like a duller edge??

Originally Posted by gssixgun

OK, I have seen this statement one too many times...

First, please only answer if you can explain how you are getting a slightly duller blade...

This is all relative . compare to what? or what is sharpness standard for someone . it is going to be personal choose.Example if i say this blade too sharp same blade could be for you dull etc.

I really don't wanna hear about "I like a Coticule" or a Ch12k or any other finish stone or paste....really that has nothing to do with "sharpness"..

Why not you don't wanna hear about it? what you mean nothing do to sharpness? i am respectfully disagree on this. They (stones ,pastes etc has everything to do with sharpness.

This I gotta hear, PLEASE somebody tell me how to hone my razors to a slightly duller edge???

I am sure i can help with this one. Please finish your honing coticule or Escher stone and see how it does shave

I think Glen confusion is not duller razor but sharp razor's. Again they are relative terms.
I know you do have and use pastes. if you want to see which sharpness is bothering people i think use Flormonica 14( i am sure you have couple of them) after finishing on Escher mover to .25 diamond paste for 30-40 laps and shave see how it does shave.

I shaved for two years with an edge that came from the factory, "honed" by me on a concave Escher. I then proceeded to cutting and nicking the heck out of my strop, and continued using it. So I know about dull.

When I got this same razor back from one of our honemeisters, it was the first sharp razor I had used. After my first shave I had weepers all over my face and a few nicks. I've since learned to use a lighter hand and do very well with it. But....

Since I've honed a couple of my own blades, with a proper setup, I'm finding I get a more comfortable and closer shave with my blade, than one honed by a pro. This really surprised me because I'm not yet able to match in sharpness the pro edges that I have. I have four blades honed by three different honemeisters.

It can be argued that I just don't have the proper skill to use a professionally honed blade yet, and that would be correct. But if the end game is close, comfortable shaves, then I really don't need the proper skill to wield a professionally honed blade, since my edge works. Each persons shaving experience is different and I think there's a balance that must be struck between the keenness of an edge and the person's skill, to get a satisfying shave.

That's why I've said I like a duller edge, or a razor that isn't too sharp, in relation to honemeister sharp. I think the confusion is mostly semantics.

Having said all that, I'm sure as my shaving skill and honing skill increases, the sharpness bar I'm comfortable with, will move upward as well. And I do want to learn how to bring a blade to "scary sharp," but it's more for the fun of it than anything else.

I'm quite sure that they are nearly exactly the same width across the bevels. Verhoeven demonstrated that the limits for the edge width arrive at a surprisingly low abrasive grit, something around 4k or so, and that going up to 8000 grit and higher (he went up to 0.5 micron chrome oxide) doesn't change this fundamental sharpness.

So why do you hone your razors beyond 4k? Why use the yellow side of the norton, or a coticule or escher. Why do people argue about which gets a sharper edge, when the edge isn't getting any sharper? Something else is being done to that edge, something besides making it sharper. Something that doesn't make it sharper as measured across the bevels, but makes it feel and act for all the world as if it were sharper.

Exactly!!! Thank you, Discussion done...

Sharpness is one aspect, and smoothness is another....

The actual thickness of the edge is sharpness, how it feels on your skin is smoothness...

This is what I have been saying all along, any more talking on my part and I will sound like that guy that doesn't like the word "Splash"

Originally Posted by gssixgun

I'm quite sure that they are nearly exactly the same width across the bevels. Verhoeven demonstrated that the limits for the edge width arrive at a surprisingly low abrasive grit, something around 4k or so, and that going up to 8000 grit and higher (he went up to 0.5 micron chrome oxide) doesn't change this fundamental sharpness.

So why do you hone your razors beyond 4k? Why use the yellow side of the norton, or a coticule or escher. Why do people argue about which gets a sharper edge, when the edge isn't getting any sharper? Something else is being done to that edge, something besides making it sharper. Something that doesn't make it sharper as measured across the bevels, but makes it feel and act for all the world as if it were sharper.

Exactly!!! Thank you, Discussion done...

Sharpness is one aspect, and smoothness is another....

The actual thickness of the edge is sharpness, how it feels on your skin is smoothness...

This is what I have been saying all along, any more talking on my part and I will sound like that guy that doesn't like the word "Splash"

I'm not saying that at all. The actual thickness of the edge is only part of sharpness. It determines the amount of resistance the blade feels to break the surface of the whisker or skin. But the other part of sharpness is the cutting friction, which determines the amount of resistance the blade feels to separate the whisker or skin apart. You would think this would be minor, but if you've ever used a splitting wedge to break up firewood then you know that this is actually a pretty major factor, and whiskers are even tougher than wood.

The commercial blade manufacturers lower the cutting friction by coating the blades in teflon. We lower the cutting friction by polishing the cutting surfaces with high-grit hones. This changes the percieved sharpness of the razor, and I guess correlates with smoothness as long as the resistance is still high enough. Teflon seems to lower it too much for an unguarded blade, while reasonable levels of polish are just right, and for a straight razor shaver offer him a greater degree of control over the resulting level of "perceived sharpness" since he values the honing time less than the commercial razor manufacturers. But it's not a perfect correlation with smoothness - there are other factors that affect smoothness, such as bevel angle, presence of different size scratch patterns, etc. And I can have a beautifully smooth-shaving razor that is nonetheless too sharp for comfortable daily shaving - I did this for many months when I was playing with newspaper, before I decided that there really was a limit the level of sharpness I preferred.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Exactly!!! Thank you, Discussion done...

Sharpness is one aspect, and smoothness is another....

The actual thickness of the edge is sharpness, how it feels on your skin is smoothness...

I respectfully disagree with that.

I am a HHT-ing guy, and I'm rather thorough about objectizing that test. Each time I hone a razor, I observe how the keenness keeps improving till the very last stroke of the honing job. And then some during stropping.

It may be that the finishing hone only squeezes 0.05 micron of the width of the edge. But 0.45 is still 10% keener than 0.50. At the same time, that 0.05 micron means far less if you're still at the 1 micron level (the notorious newbie error of jumping into finishing mode too soon).

"Smoother" is another ambiguous term. If the blade severs the hairs easier, most people will qualify that as "smoother."
I believe many of the pastes are considered "smoother" because they render the edge a tad keener.
What I only partially buy, is that "better glide" theory.
A razor does not cut with less effort because it glides better through the whiskers. It does not need to glide through the whiskers. They're not a block of cheese where the knife needs to still pass through after the cut. The only glide we need is glide over the lathered skin. I don't think we are able to discern much between the different levels of polish we put on the bevel of a razor. I do think teflon fills the scratches, reducing jaggedness of the edge, and therefor reducing the damage to the skin. It irritates less, which also could be called "smoother".

Bart.

Originally Posted by Bart

What I only partially buy, is that "better glide" theory.
A razor does not cut with less effort because it glides better through the whiskers. It does not need to glide through the whiskers. They're not a block of cheese where the knife needs to still pass trough after the cut.

I hate arguments by authority, but the commercial razor blade manufacturers disagree with you. The friction i'm talking about isn't the friction between the whisker and blade after the whisker has been severed - its the friction between the whisker and blade while it's still being cut, as the blade is forcing the whisker apart. The initial effort to separate the strands of fibrin is determined by the edge width, but the whisker is as much as 180 microns across, so the two halves of the whisker are riding up the bevel quite a ways, and the whisker in front of the cutting edge is being stretched as the blade is forcing the two halves apart, acting like a spring and pulling the two halves tightly against those bevels. This can cause substantial friction, and substantial resistance.

Originally Posted by Bart

The only glide we need is glide over the lathered skin. I don't think we are able to discern much between the different levels of polish we put on the bevel of a razor.

Of course we can. The edge doesn't get any sharper past about 4k, but the bevel gets more polished. The commercial guys stop honing at some coarse grit, but that teflon makes all the difference in the world. And schick's "making of the modern blade" article makes it clear that the do it for sharpness, not smoothness.

Originally Posted by Bart

I do think teflon fills the scratches, reducing jaggedness of the edge, and therefor reducing the damage to the skin. It irritates less, which also could be called "smoother".

I disagree. A few years ago after I first read the Verhoeven paper I was looking into the whole sharpness question, and trying to figure out what the commercial guys knew about it, and ran across the patent for teflon coating razor blades. That patent claimed that the teflon coating was just a few tens of nanometers thick (i.e. too thin to fill in or reduce the jagginess of anything), and that the stress of shaving caused it to peel off of the cutting edge nearly instantly. Over the course of multiple shaves the peeled area would gradually increase until it was no longer effective.

Originally Posted by mparker762

I hate arguments by authority, but the commercial razor blade manufacturers disagree with you. The friction i'm talking about isn't the friction between the whisker and blade after the whisker has been severed - its the friction between the whisker and blade while it's still being cut, as the blade is forcing the whisker apart. The initial effort to separate the strands of fibrin is determined by the edge width, but the whisker is as much as 180 microns across, so the two halves of the whisker are riding up the bevel quite a ways, and the whisker in front of the cutting edge is being stretched as the blade is forcing the two halves apart, acting like a spring and pulling the two halves tightly against those bevels. This can cause substantial friction, and substantial resistance.

A fair explanation
I don't know enough about this topic, so I'll accept your point.

Originally Posted by mparker762

Of course we can. The edge doesn't get any sharper past about 4k (...)

That goes against all my observations and against all logic.
Why would an edge be continuously be able to be defined between thiner boundaries, as we progress through increasingly finer hones, and certainly stop doing that at the 4K level?
If it were true, this would mean I could hone an razor till it peaks at my Chosera 5K (I'm sorry it's not 4K) and next, just suffice to replace the Chosera scratch pattern on a Coticule with water (that's how I eventually finish the vast majority of my edges), and end up with a result that meets my standards? I have to ask you to take my word for it, but that razor would not be sharp enough to my standards.

Talking about Verhoeven: I scanned through his paper once more. Where does he state that the edge width (EW) stops decreasing at 4000 grit?
Verhoeven reports about how the edge width decreases from stropping on CrO or on 1µ diamond paste. "The 1 micron diamond abrasive produced optimum edge widths of around 0.3 microns, while the CrO abrasive gave only slightly larger EW values, around 0.4 microns."
Maybe those guys saying that diamond paste is "harsher" than CrO, are talking about too keen edges after all.

If the differences are that significant on paste particles of 1µm and 0.5µm, then I don't believe that they will only be in the nanometer region on hones that use abrasives coarser than that.

Bart.

Originally Posted by Bart

.

It may be that the finishing hone only squeezes 0.05 micron of the width of the edge. But 0.45 is still 10% keener than 0.50. At the same time, that 0.05 micron means far less if you're still at the 1 micron level (the notorious newbie error of jumping into finishing mode too soon).

I think the difference is much, much, less like maybe 1/100th of a micron not 5/100ths and I don't think you can feel or notice that difference...
But you can feel and notice the difference of the finish applied to the bevel just like Mr. Parker says....
Again back to the Sharpness-vs-Smoothness semantics...

I am absolutely disagree who says edge gets it is sharpness on 1k level 4k level.
REST is POLISHING?
Can a good Person explain to me what does polishing do? or meaning of it?
Does it changes thickness of the edge?
or just makes shiny bevel?
My opinion doesn't matter how you guys call darn edge gets sharper as you go all-way (1k,2k,5k,10k, so on)until the end depends where you stop.

I don't like dull. Give me scary sharp. I'm still learning to hone and I want to to really learn to refine an edge as close to perfection as possible.