Thread: Questions About Edge Longevity & Honing

Originally Posted by Ryan82

No, no misunderstanding at all. I agree wholeheartedly that a person will subconciously adjust technique for a dulling blade. Hell, I've done it myself and been very aware of it. However, I'd rather not let my razors slip to the point where I have to do 100 laps on the coti instead of 20, but it does happen.



I think all three of us are in agreement about adapting to the sharpness of a single razor? BTW I am an advocate of not changing razors daily, to get "used" to a particular razor again before moving on to the next one. I generally rotate every two weeks, and it works great for me.

However, this was all disputed by Sham in his earlier post, where he says his TI shaved the same as it did 45 days after it hit the hones. This is definitely not my experience, maybe he can shed some light on this, but I think most members will say that an edge is not performing exactly the same after being used for 1.5 months.

I still think you're still misunderstanding something, or at least focusing on the wrong things. You seem to think that this aforementioned adaptation is the key to keeping a razor going, that somehow the razor is really getting dull but the user just doesn't realize it, so after a few months of use the razor will be in terrible shape. This isn't necessarily true.

The adaptation to a single razor ("fidelity" in DE parlance) tends to improve your shaves, and is a benefit to using the same razor every day, but it is not central to edge longevity. It was just something I noticed during my longevity experiments. The adaptation to the slowly dulling razor also happens, but it is not central to edge longevity - it is something to be aware of as the months roll by, and if you're really worried about how the edge is wearing then maybe you might want to recalibrate your senses with another razor because your internal sharpness sensor starts to drift. But that is all. The edge does not last longer because you just don't realize it is getting dull - it lasts longer at a given level of sharpness.

Your resistance to believing that the edge really can last for months or years is understandable. If you go back and read the "stropping is king" thread you'll see the same skepticism from the participants - including myself.

I believe this skepticism is what is causing your confusion over Sham's post - because you really don't believe (despite giving us the benefit of the doubt) that the edge really can last for an extended period of use without appreciable wear, Sham's post sounds contradictory. But 45 days isn't terribly much of the life of an edge that may last for 300 days, after all - so why shouldn't it be as sharp as the day it was honed, or at least close enough that it's difficult to tell? If the end state of the edge is "dull" then yes one would expect to see a fair level of degradation, but if in fact the edge only wears as much in that year as some guys get in a week or two, then 45 days of use just isn't much, about an equivalent level of wear as some guys get in a single shave. From what I've seen on my razors they generally shave *better* after a few weeks than they did when they came off the hone, because the improvement by smoothing and polishing from the leather and linen is greater than the degradation of the edge from stresses of daily shaving. After a month or so this turns around and the edge slowly declines. For my Heljestrand it has been imperceptible, and I do switch up my razors every now and then to make sure I'm not fooling myself. It isn't my sharpest razor at the moment, but then it never has been. It's still sharper than several razors that have very little use on them, but not as sharp as some others. What I'm trying to say is that it is nearly sharp as the day it came off the hone, close enough that there isn't a huge difference. There's probably as much day-to-day variation in the edge of this razor just from normal variations in stropping (from caffeination level, late night, general crankiness) than there is between this razor and my other Heljestrands that have seen only a few shaves. The decline isn't a straight line by any means, sometimes it goes off a bit for a day or two then some careful attention to my stropping technique brings it back to where it was or even better than it was before. If I'm so inclined I can still strop this razor so it's sharper than I really like to shave with. This was one of the big things I learned in my initial edge longevity experiments, and I alluded to it in an earlier post in this thread - that I didn't have to reach for the hone whenever a razor started getting dull, that usually the true culprit was my stropping, which had gotten a bit off and needed correction.