Hello Tuttle,Quote:
Originally Posted by randydance062449
There's a lot of validity to what you say. You can actually see those striations under 200x magnification. However, a hair looks like a tree trunk next to them. Those tiny striations are like pins that stick up from the edge. I haven't been able to see it (200x is not enough), but I assume what happens when you shave is that the pins turn on an angle (sideways to the blade) instead of facing straight up. When they turn sideways, it makes the edge seem wider. Stropping would stand up those pins and make the edge narrower (sharper).
But I noticed something else that is also interesting. The edge has scratch marks that are on a much larger scale than the pins. They run crosswise along the entire edge and back on the entire width of the edge (about .5-1 mm). As you hone with finer grits the lines get narrower. If you use the x pattern, a pasted strop produce lines that cross the other lines. So, if you use the x pattern, stropping goes across the scratch marks. Leather (only) stropping polishes the lines and can make the finest lines fade.
The scratch lines are like treads on a tire and produce friction, because they come into contact with the skin behind the edge. For comfort, you would want to minimize them. With the x pattern, when you go to the pasted strops you break up the scratches because you go across them, but there are still some coarse portions. If you hone straight across the stone, everything would be parallel, and the pasted strops would break up the coarser scratch lines. Leather stropping should then give you a much smoother edge.
If you think of shaving as just a pushing operation (ignore the scything motion), angled scratch lines present more of an area to the skin than ones which are perpendicular to the edge, so you would expect angled scratch lines to have more friction (less comfort).
Manufactured blades, like Feathers all have scratch lines that are perpendicular to the edge.
Everything I've seen suggests that honing parallel to the stone should produce a better edge than the x pattern. Maybe the x pattern is only historical and a result of narrow stones.
BTW, the pins are so small that you barely see them at 200x. If you're using an 8 inch stone, the scratch lines are at about 15 degrees. As it is, the spacing between pins is much smaller than the thickness of a hair. A 15 degree angle could hardly make a difference in that spacing.
If someone has a microscope that can magnify more than 200x, we could learn a lot.