Quote Originally Posted by threeputt
AF,

As to shaving with teeth, I cannot ...

Jeff


Zappa's great album cover, once posted by Corey Greenberg on his shaveblog...

Jeff, I will put away my scyte and torch this time. Sharpening razors is lost art, and we are all trying to do our best here. That teeth thing didn't make any sence for me either, so since it was written in the barber's manual from 60's and discussed here a lot, I started collecting microscope pics and I am still puzzled. The pyramid method, weeell, I am still using it a bit, but every now and then, and than with hesitation... I try to keep my razors sharp with just the 8000, and rarely when things don't look good under my 8x jeweler's loupe, I'll hit the 4000... The pyramid method was created on the first place to avoid overhoning on the edge. Varying between high and low grits, if there is a burr (or wire edge) forming on the 4K, the 8K side will take care about it. It was designed (I think) for honing dull razor, or very dull eboy special. On those edges, the bevel is often uneaven across the edge, and if using just the 4K, when sharpening one part of the edge, you might oversharpen another. That's why you alternate grits, and going to the finer grit, you remove burr from the lower. Just like in knife sharpening, you don't go to the finer grits, untill you raise burr on the lower...

Now, there was a GREAT article link, for a large pdf document posted over at the yahoo forum. The document is called "Experiments on Knife Sharpening" and it's written by:

John D. Verhoeven
Emeritus Professor
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Iowa State University
Ames, IA

It adresses the techniques of sharpening any edge, including straight razor's, and using SEM (scaning electrone microscope) pics up to 10,000x magnification (it's not a typo) is a must read for sharpening geeks... On ocasion, they are measuring the edges of an (expertly) honed straight razor and fresh gillete blade, and they look almost identical, with the very cuting edge thickness of about 0.35~0.4 microns...
I tryed uploading it here last night, but with no success... I think it was downloaded directly from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Iowa State University web site...

have fun,
Nenad