Thread: Is it the stone or the razor?

I am at a point where I can get a razor very well honed from zero, I mean from the begging, creating the bevel up to stropping it. I am still learning and I always use either a naniwa 12000k, a thuringian stone or cromium oxide as a finishers but I notice little difference.
I got maybe 35 razors and I've seen and felt the difference from razor to razor, even if two razors are honed with the same stones, there are razors, when thumb testing them, they make a nice noise like when you are hitting glass very softly. I noticed this sound mainly on all the JA Henckels twinworks razors, on a Boker King cutter, a Red IMP, a C.W. HELJESTRAND, a Western bros. Manganese steel, and the last one is a COMFORT made in Germany. Of all them are full hollow, and the sound is very faint but kind of musical. On the other hand I own several Wade&Butcher razors and they are very sharp and they are honed same way as the other brands, but when shaving they are not as comfortable as the other brands I previously mentioned.
So could it be that the steel is more important than the stone? Could it be that a flexible steel is better than a very hard and stiff one, regardless of the finishing stone?

That actually winds up being very complex in my mind because of the variable. The full and extra hollow razors i find to be very noisy and then as the grind and size increase they get more quiet. The shave quality and comfort tend to be more about the mood than the blade, presuming that they are all properly honed. My favorite razors are all over the board, with aspect to grind and size, but each have their days.

I think the hand applying the steel to the stone is what is important.

My 2c based on accumulated info here, and a fairly extensive metallurgical background. Just something to think about. May be completely off base. A study of a wide variety of blades in various condition at very high mag in an SEM would be an interesting exploration, albeit costly. I don't happen to have a personal SEM on which to do this. Any one wants to com up with $150K to contract with my lab to do the work, look me up ;- )

That said, those of you still reading...

Based on reading a lot of "field information" here, I might hazard a guess that some of the differences people notice may very well be variations in the microstructure of the steel of particular razors. Even two razors made out of the same original billet could end up behaving slightly differently on honing response and subsequent shave feel if the tempering cycle in the heat treat was slightly different (temperature, heating/cooling rate, and time at tempering temperature. Most of these blade steels in the final use condition are probably fairly fine grained (2-10µm grain size??? if I were guessing). You then have lots of grain boundaries intersecting the sharpened edge. I would suspect these steels are principally hardened by martensite structure (iron carbide). The tempering cycle refines the size of carbide precipitates on grain boundaries and sometimes within grains, too. To get this up to visualization level, imagine different hand saws. is a crosscut saw with really fine teeth, another has coarser teeth that are shaped for rip sawing, and another has medium pitch pull-saw-type teeth. At the microscopic level, the different blade edges may have this type of variations. One blade might be very hard and hone to a good edge, but the carbides are coarse and tend to chip off the edge easily. Maybe give the sense of harshness since the edge has a lot of really sharp sections, but they are interrupted periodically where the grain boundary carbides are dislodged. At the microscopic level of the blade edge, you are looking at an interrupted cutting edge. Another edge may have more refined carbides with better distribution. maybe this one doesn't hone to quite the edge, but comes up nicely when stropped. Might not hold its sharpness quite as well, but has the sense of a smoother shave.

YMMV - you have been forewarned this is just conjecture.

it seems od to me that your W&B blades specificly are less comfortable since this seems to be an extreamly popular brand of vintage razors and although this is not always based in reason I would imagine that they're at least not infirior steal, this leaves troubleshooting how you honed those blades.

you say al your blades are full holow ground, I thought that W&B blades often go towards a more wedge like blade instead. I would think that every step in the honing proces would take just a litle more time since you're honing away more steel then in a ful holow ground. How do you decide it's time to go to a different hone?

sometimes when I hone a blade from scratch and in the end it doesn't feel right I just butterknive the blade and start over (while thinking I probably left some microchips initially)

Originally Posted by RandyIdaho

... some words ...

I don't happen to have a personal SEM on which to do this.

... lots more words ...

just type SEM in the search on this site and you will find quite a lot of those pictures some of which even forming the bases for a study

there are not that manny types of steel used in straight razors and they're all high-carbon type steel

For my part I have a "Celebrated Hollow Ground" Wade and Butcher and it is by far my most comfortable razor, with a John Heiffor wedge coming in a close second.

Originally Posted by shooter74743

I think the hand applying the steel to the stone is what is important.

Gentlemen, I say what I say for a reason. Lets face it, most of the razors we hone are of good or better steel. Any honer who has honed a LOT of razors can immdiately feel hardness of steel while resetting the bevel and by time they are done with polishing the edge on 8K they know how they will finish the razor. For example, if I took one of my nice Wade and Butcher choppers and worked it through my shapton gs's through 16K and then went 5 strokes on a shapton 30K the edge would look magnificent under a microscope...until the shave. You see, that edge would be overhoned, fragile and brittle. Before you made it half way through the first pass with the grain the edge would have crumbled. If I did the same honing process on the same stones with my T.I. SRP razor or Robert Williams SRP razor the outcome would be a very sharp edge that would hold up.

This example was given to show that it took experience and experimentation to learn what works with each razor. For a couple of years I "chased the edge" trying to learn just how far I could push an edge. What I realized was that every razor has a unique personality and must be addressed differently...just as people. This is why you never hear the pro's tell you a particular recipe for honing like: 21 strokes on 1K, 18 strokes on 4k, 12 strokes on 8K, and 8 strokes on 12K. No recipe will work, period. WHy? Blades are different in condition, grind, hardness, chemical composition...stones are vastly different...but the hand is the biggest variable of them all. A honing veteran can come to your house and hone any quality razor on any quality stones. It doesn't matter about the origin of the blade or stones...it's all in the hands. In the right hands any quality razor can give you a good shave.

As a non-technical person, I rely on sight and then the shave test to determine readiness.

I used a 100x pocket microscope for several years, but recently purchased this 400x USB microscope: Veho 400X Microscope, 2 MegaPixel Microscope, Veho USB Microscope, Digital Microscope Camera.

It takes a little practice to hold the thing still but it pays off for me by giving me an objective evaluation. I just don't trust things I can't see.

I quit using electric tape for honing (I used to be a staunch advocate for it) because I found myself doing more honing and more frequent re-honing. I figure the less strokes needed, the better off both the razor and I are. There are some cases I'm sure of hone wear where tape (or layers of tape) is necessary, but unless the blade is warped you probably don't.

I really think discovering an approach that works with your abilities is the what you need to do. If one razor has a harder kind of steel than another, it just means more work to get the look I need under the microscope.

Originally Posted by shooter74743

Gentlemen, I say what I say for a reason... In the right hands any quality razor can give you a good shave.

This must be so or the many people who make the time to hone Gold Dollar blades (without gross geometry problems) and claim great shaves would be liars. I suspect all of antiquity got decent shaves off of everything from clam sheels to bronze thanks to honers with good stones and a light hand.