Thread: Razors under a microscope

Joel - yes I second the thanks for your coming on here and explaining and trying to sort things out. I also second the encouragement for you to pursue your idea of getting some good SEM images of various varieties (e.g. honed and honed and stropped) of razor blades of various kinds (e.g. disposable cartridge and straight). You will definitely find *more* than adequate help and support from this community here, as well as, I agree, offers of services and blades for the project. Go needle your editor. Then go email classicshaving.com to work out a way to keep one of those razors. Cheers.

Originally Posted by matt321

I've thought about contacting the micro department of a university to see if the SEM's can be hired out.

Is that a microbiology department? Or do they know have departments that study various kinds of very small things?

Joel,

Thanks for making this right




Adam

Originally Posted by joeljohnson

Hey, guys. I'm the person that wrote that article.

First thing's first: Nightbreed, sorry we screwed up! I didn't actually assemble the gallery for that article (just the microscopic close-ups), but I apologize on behalf of everybody at Giz. We love using images from other people, but we should have asked. Please let me know what you'd like me to do. I'd be happy to give you credit in the article for your image, or just remove the image entirely. Email or DM me and I'll get it taken care of tout suite.

Originally Posted by Mijbil

Is that a microbiology department? Or do they know have departments that study various kinds of very small things?

Microscopy?

Originally Posted by Mijbil

Is that a microbiology department? Or do they know have departments that study various kinds of very small things?

Right, I meant Microscopy Department like this one:
Welcome! — MIC

Ideal situation would be to get a grad student to pick this up as a thesis or research paper. Maybe that would keep the costs down.
Fees — MIC

Maybe you've already seen these, if not, here's some 200x images Tim Zowada took of edges/bevels on different finishing stones after a Norton 8k...

Zowada Custom Knives - Razor Edges
Zowada Custom Knives - Razor Bevels

-D

As an electron microscopist this is a great thread!

I should be able to get some time on a machine for a 'project'

Where do I start though?

I'm a newbie when it comes to straights.

I have a bengall that was shave ready when I bought it, but I have used / stropped it, and it will need a hone soon, I guess I could try and capture my progress?

I have a have a DT and c12k(ebay) on order.

Originally Posted by Duffer

As an electron microscopist this is a great thread!

I should be able to get some time on a machine for a 'project'

Duffer, you are gonna become a popular guy in short order.

There are sooo many things that would be nice to see under a SEM. Probably the biggest thing that I would like to see would be a comparison of finishing techniques: edges finished off of just an 8k vs. various finishers vs. different pastes. Much of that has already been done with optical microscopy, but the SEM gives much better depth of field and makes it easier to see what's going on.

I'm sure there will be a lot of other ideas about what would be worthwhile uses of an SEM.

the thing to look at with SEM is the effect of stropping, the finishes off the hones are pretty clear and straightforward, the stropping is still somewhat of a mystery.

you need to use much lower magnification for honing, a good 100x optical microscope or even less magnification is more than enough.