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This is kind of a surprising question for me - I wasn't aware that there's every been a consensus that you *need* a hone beyond 8k. My Shaptons, Nakayama, and Spyderco are nice to have, but I've...

As to the original topic of this thread, I've come around to believing that Scott is quite right about the importance of stropping.

My comment above was a reference to my attempts to duplicate...

I'm doing some experimenting myself and getting some very encouraging results but I'm in the early stages yet. Unfortunately it's making my morning shaves pretty boring.

I think so too, however this doesn't change basic physics. The only energy that is available to heat up the edge is the energy from your arm that goes to overcoming the drag, and blades just don't...

Scott claims his strop isn't getting gray from accumulated swarf, though it's possible he's cleaning it frequently enough not to notice. My old Bismark's linen side definitely got gray, though I...

I wonder if that's not a contributor to this disagreement on edge life. The razor I shaved with this morning is on its 5th shave, and though the edge is just fine I'm still feeling dissatisfied...

The few times it's happened has been on ebay razors that I'm honing up the first time (lots of work on the 4k). Never seen it happen on one of my old razors, but the sample size is too small for...

I think the suggestion of using a new razor and strop and using lynn for the initial honing is a bad idea. We need to change one thing and see what happens. Since most of the discussion has been...

This has only happened a few times. I don't do the thumbnail test after I leave the 4k. And I generally don't do the thumb test once the blade starts getting close. And in my experience wire edges...

It didn't fall on deaf ears. The same thing happens when you use an abrasive hanging strop, which several of us have. The edge is stronger, but not orders of magnitude stronger.

I've seen this with razors as well. I've had it happen a few times where a blade just wasn't getting quite there on the hone, and before I put it away till the next time I stropped it to get the...

I know I overhone a bit trying to get the sharpness I want. It's something I'm working on, and I'm slowly getting better at it.

Not to be snarky about it but try shaving without stropping every day for a week.

DE blades are very different beasts. They aren't designed to be resharpened, so the manufacturers can pull all...

Right, but it doesn't seem to be anything you can describe either, or at least you haven't yet in this discussion described anything you're doing differently from anybody else - so something you're...

I don't know if it's metal residue, but my old Bismark strop's linen side had a definite gray hue by the time I got rid of it. And my handamerican strop is getting darker on the side I'm using as...

It's a new concept because we've never noticed this before, and it's not like we're refreshing our blades every few weeks just for the fun of it (ok, maybe some of us). So why haven't we noticed our...

Or a different tanning method. I've noticed that my edges last longer since I switched to a handamerican strop, and they supposedly use leather that is tanned with a special tanning method that...

Well, most guys do their daily stropping with very little pressure, but these experiments seem to involve a lot of pressure; so 80 laps with a lot of pressure might equal 2-3 laps on CrOx with a lot...

I'm skeptical. Linen and leather are both abrasive to some degree, linen is probably the more abrasive of the two.

somewhat off-topic but possibly relevant: I've got a few muzzleloaders, and...

That's interesting about the silica content - my edges have been lasting noticeably longer since I switched to the hand american strop.

It's only the cutting fin we're talking about here, it's very thin so it wouldn't take much friction to heat it up (because there's just not much mass there). OTOH, it's attached to a giant heat...