Good points.

It does depend on what you want and the application. Frankly how much you like designing and building jigs too. I've free hand sharpened my own pocket knife and got great results. Years ago in the hospital I was asked to repair and re-sharpen a surgical amputation knife. I set up a jig and got the edge precisely to specifications.

Same thing, I've free hand machined metal parts on old manual milling machines. But with a need for many parts, I've designed complex jigs and run the lot on a CNC milling machine. There is a certain satisfaction in both approaches. But I agree if you need precision, a lot of repeatability, or higher throughput a jig is nice.

I'm still stuck on how flexible the blade is on a hollow ground straight razor. I really think by hand is going to get the best result at the lowest cost. If it didn't? One of the higher volume straight razor producers would have figured out a way to automate 'shave ready' for real and use it as a competitive advantage. My guess is it just costs to much to take the human out of this process and the volume of production doesn't justify the expense.

Best,

Ed