Thread: Scanning electron microscopy and straights.

Great, if RAD and HAD weren't bad enough, now I have SEMAD.
Thanks guys

Very cool pictures!!!

pretty awesome. I hope you wont get into trouble with the thousands of requests.

....Actually guys they already have a machine that could sharpen at the sub-crystalline level. The same one used to polish the lens' of giant telescopes. Which is done by firing ions to "plane" off all the high spots at the near atomic level.

Wow, great pictures!

One (fairly simple) request to add to the pile:

Take the razor in after shaving, snap a few, then strop it and snap a few more. Even better if you could somehow find the same "dot" of blade twice.

Thanks for sharing these.

Ross,
How long does it take to prepare the blades to look at them in the scanning electron microscope?

I did electron microscopy in a physiology lab way back when. It was not a scanning scope, however. The tissue was embedded in an epoxy medium in a gelatin capsule. We made our knives by breaking glass squares into two right triangles, trimmed one end of the capsule to a truncated pyramid, placed the capsule in the chuck of a special microtome,cut the sections which floated on a drop of water, picked them up with a coated micromesh grid, got rid of the water with a piece of lens paper, and ultimately viewed them in the electron microscope.

It was a lot of tedious work, but our lab and others showed that certain chemicals in nerve cells were contained in granules which migrated to the cell membrane and were ultimately discharged across it.

That data was helpful in elucidating the way certain medications do what they do.

Some guys say that shaving isn't rocket science It isn't. It's shaving science. Your work
and that of others could very well lead to a process where an effective and straightforward method would make straights consistently sharp.

I have been using straights exclusively for a couple of years now. I was getting superb, consistent and 9 point plus shaves with my Gillette double edge called a Gillette New made in the 30's and a Feather double edge blade. Sharp, unprotected straight blades are a challenge to use and, straight razors can also be functional works of art.

I guess what really matters is how the edge appearance correlates with the closeness and level of irritation of actual shaves.

Thanks for taking the time to make those pictures.

Jerry

Originally Posted by figaro

Ross,
How long does it take to prepare the blades to look at them in the scanning electron microscope?... Thanks for taking the time to make those pictures.
Jerry

That's very cool to hear about your experiments. They are always unique and challenging when you're working with things that small.

It takes about 5 minutes to get the jig set up for good conductivity I can imagine it would be much easier without the scales on the razor and the coverage of the edge would be much better as well. Another 5 minutes to pull the vacuum in the chamber, and then another 5 to get the stigmation right. After that it's all about working with the angles, magnifications, brightness and contrast to get a good photo. So the whole process is about 30 minutes. We would charge about 50 bucks an hour for something like this, so I'm saving about 25 bucks to get a great analysis on the shape my blade is in, is how I like to look at it.

You're very welcome!

I've certainly opened a can of worms haha!

Originally Posted by Rajagra

Well, it's been about 20 years since IBM manipulated Xenon atoms to spell out their name. It's high time they got round to building some of those nanite doohickeys to do some useful stuff. I can think of no more important and achievable task than sharpening razors.
Come on IBM! You provide the nanites and I'll bring the strop to sprinkle them on!

That's exactly what I was thinking of, The old IBM Atom pic. I didn't think anyone would get it. Good going Mate!

I would like to see what a good quality D/E or S/E blade edge looks like under those conditions.

Where is the fin? Where are the teeth? I expected to see a shark in the photographs at some point!

Those photos are very interesting, thanks for sharing!

PS Did you sharpen this Boker on your Swaty? I should think it has a higher grit rating than 2,000, but as someone else suggested if it shaves well then I guess it doesn't really matter

Originally Posted by mparker762

In case you haven't seen it yet, a Prof of Metallurgy at U of Iowa did a study with an EM a few years ago

Awesome stuff but as a UIowa alum I need to correct that that PDF study was from a guy at Iowa State. Sorry but quite different. I went and toured Iowa State and the guy said 'for fun we go to the walmart down the road but they installed speedbumps now'

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

Where is the fin? Where are the teeth? I expected to see a shark in the photographs at some point!

Those photos are very interesting, thanks for sharing!

PS Did you sharpen this Boker on your Swaty? I should think it has a higher grit rating than 2,000, but as someone else suggested if it shaves well then I guess it doesn't really matter

It does have a higher grit rating, not sure what it is, but I use that as one of my final stones but mostly just as a maintenance stone. So when I notice any drop in sharpness, I'll drag it over the swaty a few times before I hone it on the strop.