Originally Posted by
Jimbo
That's a tricky question. While I agree that shave ready should mean just that, I think there are varying levels and it's not absolute, because individuals vary.
There's definitely an absolute minimum, I think. Fall below that and no-one could shave with it. But there has to be varying degrees of shave ready after that. For example, some people shave off a coticule, some off an escher, some off barber's hones, some off 16k Shaptons, some off high grit natural Japanese, some off 0.5 micron pastes, and some off the 8k Norton. :shrug: The edges produced must be different, and if we were able to measure them consistently they'd have to show measurable differences. Yet people get good shaves off all of these.
So I think the term shave ready is rather subjective in that sense. For me it's the person-specific interaction between hone, grit, steel, grind, whisker type, skin type, lather, beard prep., and shave technique.
That's the theory, anyway. The fact that honemeisters consistently produce shave-ready edges for all types of people is evidence:
1. That they know what the minimum requirement is;
2. That they consistently achieve better-than-minimum edges;
3. The individual to individual shaver variation becomes less important the further past the minimum edge standard the razor is taken.
So, I guess I'd say that there's an absolute minimum (shave ready or not) but that above that minimum there's a limited shave-readiness continuum.
James.