Quote Originally Posted by Joe Chandler
You may be right, but stropping a razor is analogous to steeling a butcher knife. You can line the wire up again and get some more cutting out of it. Sometimes, the wire edge will get bent to one side, rather than break off. The bending will slow it down, and stropping will center the wire again. Eventually, it will break off, but you can stretch it by stropping. Now, I'm not sure if that's what's happening here...just throwing out suggestions.
You know, I can't be sure you're not right.

The must be a continuity of the durability of edges all the way from dull to wire edge. It's the application that determines when the edge is too weak. A wire edge is just the extreme where the edge is too weak for anything. After all you wouldn't get that burr on the butcher knife if all you did was shave with it (assuming it was sharp enough).

I've never thought of the condition that requires stropping as a burr, although I could be wrong (it could be a microscopic one). I've visualized it as a condition where the microserrations are bent so as to spread out rather than the edge being bent. They do come back most of the way within a day. Stropping just pushes them the rest of the way. Also, I've always visualized the bending of the teeth, after they return, as being elastic. In other words, when you push them back, there's no fatigue. That would explain why you can strop and just refresh indefinitely. You're not breaking off teeth but jus sharpening the ones that are there.