Quote Originally Posted by hardheart View Post
I think you guys work in a tighter range of angles, so this really shouldn't be a concern, but sometimes the edges just fall apart when you go too low. The steel does not have the ductility to withstand sharpening forces when it is made that thin.
We definitely have that problem. Verhoeven mentions this as well, that dropping from the 40-50 degree angles used in most of the paper down to 17 degrees made it much harder to get a consistent, sharp edge (pg 21 "sharpening a blade with the 2β edge angle of the razor blades, 17o, is more difficult than a blade with the 2β edge angle of 40o"). Some straight razors have very shallow honing angles, as little as 13 degrees (see the Hart razor thread in the Razor forum) and these have trouble with the edge collapsing prematurely.