5 Attachment(s)
I need help with this razor
Ok guys I need help with this razor. I can't figure out what is going on. I have tried several things with this razor and get the same results. What makes it even more frustrating for me is that i have three razors that I have honed that are working well. This one and a few others not so much.
I am not the world's best photographer but I did the best I could here. These were taken through my engraving microscope at 20X. I dont' know how much the camera enlarged it but these pics have to be at least 40-50X. maybe more.
I'm going to walk through what I did with pics and see if you guys can figure out where things are going south.
This first pic is with the 4000 norton waterstone where I started.
Attachment 83816
This second pic is the 8000 norton. Now weird things were happening here. I keep feeling like mystery grit is magically appearing on the stone surface. I would wash it off and it would come back. I even re-lapped the face of the stone and it came back. It was almost as if little pieces were crumbling off the edge of the razor or off the stone and floating around on the surface. You can even see little scratches in the bevel from this.
Attachment 83817
This third pic is of the finish stone. This time I used my "ultra fine" spyderco ceramic (the finest one they make in the black box). At this point the edge looks pretty clean to me. It has even cleaned up the scratches form the stray mystery grit from the norton 8000
Attachment 83818
Next we have 80- strokes on the strop. I am using a "Tiger Brand" Illinois #976 with no compounds of any kind. Leather side only.
Attachment 83821
So now I try and shave with it. My right cheek and even my right neck are fine but by time I get to my left side it acts as if the edge has fallen apart. You can see in this last pic that the very edge is actually rippled.
Attachment 83822
I have also tried a Chinese water stone and also my translucent hard Arkansas as a finishing stone and I get the same result with this razor. I have tried a leather bench lap with semicrhome and I get the same result. I have tried a leather bench lap with 50K diamond spray and the same result. I get a little shinier edge and bevel with the leather laps but the edge fails the exact same way.
As I said the really frustrating thing for me is that I have a few razors (henkels, keen kutter, robeson suredge) that I treat the same way and get much much better results from.
Any idea guys?
Ray
The answer has been found
I took this razor with me to the KC meet today and showed it to Nun2sharp and and he inspected it under the scope and we talked about it for a while and his conclusion is what I have suspected.
As it turns out Kelly and I beleive Ace is right, the steel is failing at the edge. Its either too brittle or has some kind of inclusions in it that are letting small pieces fall away from the edge. That is where the mystery grit on my 8K stone was coming from. I beleive it was little particles of steel crumbling off the edge and laying on the stone. I would feel the grit as these particles built up.
So back to the stones. Hopefully, it won't take a lot to get past this area and into good steel on this blade.
Thanks to everyone for your input.
Ray