Originally Posted by
jgjgjg
An interesting rhetorical slip sideways there in the middle! ;) Agreed: any abrasive to be considered a sharpening abrasive must be able to remove metal and thereby 'sharpen' the edge. But that's not what we're asking, right? What we're essentially asking is "having sharpened the edge, is the never-to-be-eliminated sawtooth pattern sufficiently fine to slice the hair, or is it coarse enough that it either pulls the hair exclusively, or does some combination of tearing/pulling/slicing?"
Shouldn't the answer to that question depend significantly (but not exclusively) on the fineness or coarseness of the scratch pattern?
Actually, would you disagree that there are really only two factors? Those being: 1) is the sawtooth (scratch) pattern 'fine' enough and 2) are the teeth 'straight' when viewing the razor cross-sectionally? 1) is the stone 2) is the strop.