Lee and Joed, back in the old days when any tattooer worth his salt bought needles in packs of a thousand and soldered them in groups of 3 or 5 or whatever to use for tattooing we reused the needles. We would clean them in an ultra sonic and then examine them for hooks, blunt points and such. Then take the needles that were still sharp and undamaged and after autoclaving use them again. Nowadays that isn't done but that was the way it used to be before single service setups and store bought pre made tattooing needles.

So that is why I had a 30x B&L stereoscope to check needles. The idea of doing so for razors never occurred to me until doing some reading on the forum and then visiting a local honemiester who used to be on the forum. He used the radio shack micro scope.

I left his house after he showed me how to sharpen a razor with a goldedge I had gotten off of the bay. I went home and started looking at edges of razors I had and realized that without some form of magnification I couldn't know what is really going on with my honing.

An example in the above write up. I couldn't see the micro chips with the naked eye. Following a bit of bevel setting I couldn't feel them with a bevel that passed the TNT but they were still there.

Whether it is necessary to completely remove micro chips is debatable. I guess it depends on how the razor shaves. Case in point. I was doing a trade with a forum member and threw in a Genco. I had honed it and it shaved well and looked good under 30x.

He received it and told me that under 200x it had micro chips. I was surprised. I told him that his honing and especially mine would improve if he dropped down to 30x.