I still consider myself kind of new in the SR world. I'm wondering how sharpness relates to smoothness in a SR. From what I have read here, sharpness does not necessarily beget smoothness.

Before I learned anything of straight razors, I would have thought that the sharper one can get an edge, the smoother the shave would be. But it seems edges can be too sharp !

Understanding sharpness in terms of what is physically happening to the edge seems natural. But if you have two razors of identical sharpness, but whose smoothness is quite different, what at the physical microscopic level is different?

Does it have something to do with a certain grainy texture to the bevel?


Dave