Thread: let your razor rest

Shhhh guys. It's totally true.
Give into your RAD

Wll, to tell the truth, I don't let ANY of my equipment rest if I can bloody well help it!! All my Str8's included.



No ill effects either.

tinkersd

Originally Posted by dave5225

<snip>
When I was a kid back in the '60's , I had an old set of encyclopedias from the 1920's . In one of them I read that you could boil water in paper , because the boiling point of water was at a lower temp. than the flash point of paper .
<snip>
I found a small paper box , made a handle out of string for it , filled it about halfway with water , and held it over the burner of the stove .
<snip>
... the box caught on fire , and the water spilled all over the burner . This experiment taught me that you can't believe everything you read , even if it's in the encyclopedia .

Ahhh, the days of being a kid with an encyclopedia, eh?

Anyway, I was successful with the same experiment, only I made the box/container out of a standard piece of paper... (incidentally, this was circa '66 with directions from a '40s vintage book. That book got me into a lot of trouble.)

Which goes to prove nothing, really, but could be spinned into 'starting at the same place two people following the same directions will arrive at different results' type of thing.

That, even if it were to stick, would be off point anyway and totally unrelated to shaving.

I don't know what to say.... then, me getting a complete rotation thus letting my blades resting for more than a week it was just too much!?!?!?!.... thankfully my wife is not aware of SRP!!!!
On the other hand it could be useful to have a lot for honing purposes in which the celebration becomes a full sunday work!!!!

You totally can boil water in a paper bag! But the key point is that the BAG will Ignite after the water boils.... but a range works on the principle of super heating the bottom, and heat rises up. So in reality you heated the paper to close to a few hundred degrees, thus it lit on fire. You need to use a lower heat. You can also boil water in a plastic bottle, i would not drink it but you can...oh man vs wild..... you just have to have it high enough off the fire so not to melt the plastic but still heat the water.

Originally Posted by BigBlue

You totally can boil water in a paper bag! But the key point is that the BAG will Ignite after the water boils.... but a range works on the principle of super heating the bottom, and heat rises up. So in reality you heated the paper to close to a few hundred degrees, thus it lit on fire. You need to use a lower heat. You can also boil water in a plastic bottle, i would not drink it but you can...oh man vs wild..... you just have to have it high enough off the fire so not to melt the plastic but still heat the water.

Yeah so this is way Off Topic
But I couldn't help myself. Paper catches fire at 451 degrees. Water boils at 212, less than half as hot. BUT, natural gas flames burn at a base rate of about 3,000 degrees (though a lot of it dissipates into the air around it). Wood and propane flames produce a lot of heat as well, far more than 451 degrees. You can boil water in a paper container, but it has to be relatively low heat, and you have to use a diffuser plate if you're using an open flame, i.e. a skillet.

Just more useless info we could probably all live without, but one of those neat things I'll show my son some day (He's 2 now, so he wouldn't get it).

You can't always trust what you read though. But on the other hand, sometimes it allows you to get away with things!

I don't believe that resting a razor has any merit.
Having said that, it's not the same as knowing it.
Does anyone know that it's untrue (or true) and if so how do you know.
Has anyone done any measureable experiments on this matter.

Originally Posted by Deckard

I don't believe that resting a razor has any merit.
Having said that, it's not the same as knowing it.
Does anyone know that it's untrue (or true) and if so how do you know.
Has anyone done any measureable experiments on this matter.

There is an article from the 1930s and then there is the Verhoeven paper on what the edge of a straight razor looks like. There is nothing in them about the steel returning back to shape, although IIRC they don't address this question specifically.
But the first article does address the question of what makes a razor dull, and the second demonstrates a lot of the claims which are part of the 'reshaping of the edge through rest' story are just a fantasy.

I think there are copies or at least links to these articles in the document section of the wiki.

Originally Posted by Ryan82

Has the myth been bumped up to 48 hours now? It used to only be 24 hours..

I think I'll start a thread promoting 72 hours of rest & relaxation for the blade

Resting was a popular way of improvIng the edge before the use of strops. I've been thinking about trying it out. since I often go 24-48 hours between shaves and rarely strop a razor it might be fun.