Originally Posted by
mparker762
I've got a complementary experiment that may shed some light.
Back just before christmas, I did a stropping experiment where I took one razor (a 5/8 Clauss Barber's Special) and my handamerican strop and used them continuously. One side of my handamerican strop was conditioned with Williams Mug Soap at the start and every few days thereafter, the other had been recently conditioned with Fromm strop conditioner. The razor was stropped 20 laps on each side before each shave, and 10 laps on each side before shaving my chin and mouth, and 10 laps on each side after each shave.
After a few days I started getting the urge to refresh it on the chrome oxide but resisted because it was shaving better than ever - I really am a chrome oxide junky, I love the feel of a chrome oxided blade. Anyway, after about 5 days I was beginning to think that the razor wasn't just shaving smoother but it was actually sharper. I checked under the scope at 100x and the bevel was smooth and the edge was extremely clean. By about day 9 I was beginning to get concerned that the edge was acting like it was overhoned, and by day 12 the razor was beginning to act like a feather, wierd unexplained nicks and such, so I called the experiment off, and gave the razor 20 licks on the boron carbide and another 20 on the chrome oxide and it was back to normal.
My theory is that a lot of the dulling we see really is from corrosion, and the soap in the strop was protecting the edge from this corrosion because of its alkalinity - steel won't rust in a sufficiently alkaline environment. Absent this corrosion, even the slight abrasiveness in the strop was sufficient to gradually increase the sharpness of the razor over a couple of weeks.
The tie-in to your ash experiment is that like soap, ashes are alkaline - lye used to be made by dripping water through hardwood ashes.
Anyway, it's a theory.
Edit: One example of this "steel won't rust in an alkaline environment" thing is automobile antifreeze, the alkalinity prevents the iron engine block from rusting. Oils tend to be alkaline as well.