Originally Posted by
criswilson10
To see the effect of different draws on steel you would need an electron microscope. The best optical microscope I have access to can magnify up to 3200x and reliably measure down to 50 nanometers. With it you can see the effects of draw on softer materials (gold, silver, platinum, copper), but not on steel. I tried stropping two micron thick steel sheet for 100 laps with heavy draw leather and there was no measureable change in the sheet's dimension, whereas with gold, the sheet would have lengthened about 2 microns in the direction on the stropping (light draw would have been about 1.5 microns).
I have no doubt that the steel is moving, I just don't have easy access to the equipment that can measure the movement and I can't see any movement even at 3200x magnification.
For the non-techy approach:
I have small thin carving knives. Some are made of carbon steel and some are made of stainless steel. For the stainless steel knives I can strop them 10 times on my heavy draw strop to get the keenness that I want, but on my light draw strop it takes about 30 strops. When you have to strop the blade every 15 minutes or so for a few hours you really start to notice the difference in heavy and light draw and the amount of time you spent stropping instead of carving.
Back to razors.
I strop one razor twice a day (once before the shave and once after the shave). If I matched the strop draw to each razor maybe I could knock 30 seconds off my shave time. Is 30 seconds a day worth spending the money on multiple strops with different draws? For me, it is not and so my opinion is that the draw of the strop has no effect on the shave.