I think that we should get all the photos at any magnification that we can get our hands on. This way all of us can choose to use what we want. :)
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I think that we should get all the photos at any magnification that we can get our hands on. This way all of us can choose to use what we want. :)
I think we do need a lot more than 200, though I suspect scopes capable of that sort of magnification are pricey. Most of the "interesting" details from a sharpness perspective are in the first 10-20 pixels from the edge in those photos. If there's any way to get shots looking at the front of the edge (or a quarter shot at the front) instead of just the sides that would be great.
I often look edge on when I'm doing a new to me old blade to let me see where the edge is thicker, how any chips or burrs look. Not that you really see the edge once it's sharp.
I just wish I had a trinocular stereo or a metalurgical scope.
Not that I'm anything of an authority, but I just inspected the Feather DX blade I removed from the razor this morning after about a dozen shaves. As far as I can see, under the microscope at 100X, the edge and bevel appear to be nearly identical to the edge of a completely unused blade. There are no nicks or dips or rough places at all, in contrast to the the str8 I've been trying to hone forever, which even at 60X looks like the Sawtooth Range seen from about 50 miles off. Obviously, though, the brand new Feather blade I installed is the one that shaves like a charm. That said, I believe that the 'scope will help me ascertain when I've gotten rid of the rough, jagged places in the str8 blade, whereupon I can refine my effort and concentrate on getting it actually shave-ready which, as we've been hearing, you can't really tell by looking through an ordinary 'scope.
-denis
I think grunion has a handle on the matter. With the use of magnification, I think we beginners are hoping to see what a good edge looks like so that in the attempts to sharpen/hone/maintain an edge we get an idea what to look for. Some have said things to the effect that determining a properly sharpened blade may only be done on the face of the user and that properly sharpening a blade is determined by hone and test, hone and test, hone...
How does it work for the factory, then? DE blades are sharpened by machine using a mechanical process devised by a craftsman or mechanic and most likely tested by observation of the quality of the edge. Certainly each blade is not individually tried on a test face. Thus I think that once someone has achieved an excellent edge and were he to use a scope of sufficient magnification, he should be able to tell with the next edge if he has gotten that next blade properly sharp.
I await explanations of the defects in my logic, Bruce:bow
I do not know how the factories test their blades, but I suspect they have a testing facility that can test whole batches very efficiently. Probably a sheet of some standardized material (dry gelatin or some such) and a bank of blades attached to strain gauges. I doubt that optical microscopes come into play except when blades start failing, and I bet they use electron microscopes for R&D purposes.
There's an article on the Schick website that talks about how they manufacture and sharpen their blades, if you're curious.
Edit: Disregard above. See post below with quote from Schick website on how they test their blades.
ACTUALLY, I DON'T SEE ANY DEFECTS IN YOUR LOGIC. MANY COMPANIES HAVE MANUFACTURED STRAIGHT RAZOR BLADES AS WELL AS DOUBLE EDGE RAZOR BLADES THAT SHAVE SUPERBLY. NONE OF THIS CAME ABOUT BY CHANCE, ALL OF IT IS THE RESULT OF PROPERLY APPLYING SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING. PROTOCOLS HAD TO HAVE BEEN DEVELOPED TO CORRELATE A SET OF OBSERVABLE, QUANTIFIABLE PARAMETERS WITH SMOOTHNESS, CLOSENESS AND COMFORT IN THE RESULTING SHAVE. WE CAN DO ALL THIS TOO! :)
It's still possible to get DE blades with bad edges. It's not common, but from my time hanging out at B&B it doesn't seem rare, either.
In my personal experience, a microscope is most helpful for identifying a bad edge. An edge that looks good under magnification may or may not shave well. I used my microscope constantly for several months, but I haven't picked it up since Christmas. It taught me a lot, and now I can get the same information from other tests.
Just my 2 cents,
Josh
Tony, I should have pointed out that I was speaking of replaceable blades. They are manufactured in very large quantities. No doubt this accounts for more money available for QC . That Dovo says their traditional straight razors are shave ready is their view. They don't sell that many and so there isn't much money available to QC the product very well. We may be more demanding than they are. But I think that you would have to look long and hard to find anyone that would say that a replaceable Feather straight razor blade was not shave ready! :)
No need to shout. :nono:
Rgdominguez, do you stay connected with people in Material Science and/or metallurgy at the University level? Perhaps you/they could get/reference some research papers and/or dissertations that have included the topics of sharpening and making edges. It's hard to believe that all the knowledge in that area was generated in the industrial sector alone. At the level of detail we need, I'd guess this research was likely done long ago, so it should be readily available?
Joe, I wasn't meaning to shout! I know that some take capital letters that way. In this case, I accidentally hit the Caps Lock key and by the time I noticed it, I didn't have the heart to erase everything and type it over, I'm a 2 finger pecking kind of typist! I do work with university material scientests and will gather together some references.
This is all very interesting and let me ask this:
Does Tim use a straight razor?
If so - he can help this discussion a lot by test-shaving the edges he showed and sharing comments.
If he doesn't - I am sure some razor jedi here would love to get to test his beauties :shrug: (which may be even better - if we do it blind to the stones) I am not a "master" but have tried a few and I think I can make a good comparison - so if it comes to this - send them my way :D
B&B is running a similar experiment and while I will argue that there are too many things that are not addressed properly - the shaving test will be more appropriate.
Classic Shaving states that Tim hones the razors. So - Tim is ultiumately interested to see what gives a better shaving edge, not a better looking edge. If the edge looks just as good as a Feather (if this is possible) but does not shave well - somebody will buy it and be dissatisfied, and even potentially hurt himself (or herself ;) ) - not good. Since Tim is not selling bazzilion of these, it would not be problematic to test shave with each. To be fair - the test shave is still very subjective and may not work for all buyers 100% of the times but other than the buyer testing the actual blade this is the best we have.
Cheers
Ivo
This is from the Schick website:
I'm sure the marketing guys wrote this, so it may may be only approximately accurate, but it's interesting nonetheless.Quote:
The inspection procedures include visual and microscopic examinations, chemical and metallurgical testing, physical testing of blade strength and durability, and electronic video inspection systems. However, the final assessment of shave quality rests with the shaver. All shave testing is conducted using humans as test subjects. To this end, thousands of men and women participate in shave testing of all product lines every day. Local shave panels evaluate the quality of the manufactured products before they leave the building on their way to the consumers' hands. Other panels evaluate production from all manufacturing facilities to ensure consistent quality from one plant to another.
Edit: The P&G website is completely, utterly useless. There isn't even a Gillette section, just a single page each for the various gillette products they think are worth hawking. Gah! If I weren't such a Luddite I might use the Schick razors just because of that abomination of a website.
When I was a kid one of my uncles took me on a tour of the shop where he worked. He was a machinist and worked for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. In fact he made the first heart-lung machine. In showing off the shop, he took me by a machine which absolutely facscinated me. That machine sharpened knives used to section samples for pathology work. It had a large, horizontal circular plate that looked like green glass and which rotated slowly against a knife held in a clamp that would hold one side to the plate, then rotate it so the other side was held to the plate. Once having gone through the correct number of cycles to get sharpened properly, these knives would slice off .002" thick sections of samples so they could be microscopically examined.
I just figure that somehow we should be able to not only replicate edges like that, but also be able to describe them as well. Perhaps it is not as simple as pointing to the picture and saying, "see, see, that's what it should look like," but it would be something pretty close to that. "Get close to that appearance, and you're probably using a correct technique and getting close to the edge you want."
Dream on grasshopper, dream on, Bruce :w
That Nat'l Geographic documentary about shaving that someone linked to way back had lots of footage of these "local shave panels." Guys shaving in "private" cubicles with 2-way mirrors, and Gillette analysts on the other side studying their strokes, patterns, how long it takes them, etc. Then they ask these local shave volunteers lots of questions about their preferences. So I don't think it's total BS.
Unfortunately the documentary producers seemed to rely pretty heavily on industry guys. When it came to the straight shaving segment, they had a video of an awkward-looking fellow honing, flipping on the edge after each stroke, then an interview with a professor explaining that it's "physically impossible" to shave yourself with a straight razor. It was pretty funny.
dylandog, did the professor sport a beard or was he clean shaven and therefore certifiably crazy!!! :roflmao:roflmao:roflmao:gth
They cut hair perfectly well but many of them would be awkward to hold. No I'm not going to try one out as I don't really relish the thought of putting a blade against my face that has cut some pretty strange things.
Unless someone wants to donate some blades? :)
Not that I'd be able to use many of the sizes and shapes of diamond/glass or disposable blades afterwards. :(
mparker,
How they shaved? Dunno, this tour was taken long before started shaving whiskers and that being the case, I was greatly more curious about how it could shave meat so much thinner than the dried beef I occasionally had for lunch.:hmmm:
:OT , Bruce
Just a personal observation on the coticule-with-slurry edge: I tried a shave-test with an edge that I finished on my coticule with a thick slurry. It was pretty rough. I've been able to get nice shaves by using the coticule with no slurry. I was thinking that maybe the less polished edge might cut better--more teeth on the edge.
So I think the extra polish shown in the photos is a good thing. :)
Josh
Just a thought,
Josh
Actually, this thread piqued my interest in digital microscopes and I've been doing some research. Plenty of inexpensive USB microscopes can go up to 400x but their output is only 640 x 480 pixels...kinda wimpy for my tastes. The best I've seen without getting really pricey would be the ProScope HR. For $304 you get 1280x1024 resolution (video and stills) and a 50x lens. They make a 400x lens that'll run you about $250.
Maybe this is small potatoes for some people. Not for this broke-@$$ college boy. :shrug:
Next runner up would be the Digital Blue QX5. It only goes up to 640x480, but you get 10x, 60x and 200x for $80-$100, depending where you shop. I get the impression that it's a bit of a toy.
It could be that 640x480 is an entirely serviceable size for this sort of application. I'm into digital photo and design, so I tend to be a resolution junkie--drooling over 10.2 mega-pixel Nikon D80s, sniffing at anything under 6Mpx. The point being, I'm maybe not the best judge of how hi-res a scope would need to be in order to be useful to a honer.
I tried using a scanner recently to examine a blade I had just honed versus a blade I got from altima55, but since the razor's edge doesn't touch the glass, it came out a little out of focus. Scanners=nil depth of field and no focus control :td. As a bit of a hack, one could hook up a digital camera to a TV set (mine came with a cable to do that) and if you have decent optical zoom you may be able to gain some insight...probably not though. Maybe with a really good macro lens. Which I can't afford.
Just out of curiosity, those of you use microscopes, what kind of setup do you have?
I use a 30X Micronta handheld scope that tells me everything I need to know.
For looking at things like this I use a Bausch and Lomb Stereozoom but it isn't a trinoc so I don't take pictures. I do own other scopes but they aren't suitable for this kind of thing - I prefer the stereo microscope image anyway as you get more depth of field and a more 3 dimensional view.
These scopes are usually much cheaper in the US than over here and are nice and light weight (I have it on a sort of turntable with others so they take up less desk space.)
Oh and I usually just use 12.5X eyepieces although I do have 20X so can use it nearer 100X if I need to.
Hi,
I have the QX5, and it really IS a toy :) The resolution would be ok, if the lenses would be able to offer a decent resolution to go with it - which they don't.
And the biggest negative to me: the mechanics are really shabby (well, like a cheap plastic toy). Together with the narrow depth-of-view this really sucks for our purpose. It may be much better for looking at dead ants, though :D
YMMV,
-Axel-
Tim,
I keep poring over the photos and having conversations about the study with other SRPers who are doctoral level researchers. We all agree that you've done a major service here and want to encourage you to continue with the study. Personally, I'd like to see photos comparing strops - natural leathers, diamond coated, and CrO coated and linen. I'd volunteer my precious Pike hanging strop for such a test!
The 400+ year data set of barbers using coticules and natural leather strops is compelling but empirical! Your study has started to shed light on that data set. We need to continue that work and I'm happy to be part of it as I'm always in search of . . . the perfect edge.