Interesting article

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Originally Posted by Seraphim

In "The Grand Experiment" 30 laps before and after turned out better long term than only 60 laps before, right?

Probably due to this drying off the edge after shaving. I usually give my razors 10 laps or so after shaving for this reason.

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As I recall the 30 before and after was about the same as 60 before but I'm too lazy to go back and read it all. personally, I do 60 before and 20 on the linen and that has worked out good for me.

yea I always thought that with carbon steel once you got to that thin edge rust and corrosion forms almost immediately on a nice clean edge on a microscopic level. That iron has a real affinity for 02. Once it starts it grows very rapidly so whatever you can do to prevent it is the best course.

I believe that everything has an abrasive quality..even if you rub a diamond on your strop it will be abraded eventually. Yes it would take an insane long time and ruin your whole strop but I think its possible. I wish the pictures were better...exactly what magnification were they using, and how does that compare to the other more common pics? Id love to see this redone with new technology.


How much stropping is too much? With enough passes could you could dull the edge, like when you stay on the paste too long...

[quote=AFDavis11;219137]WONDER PHOTOS REVEAL UNSUSPECTED FACTS ABOUT Razor Blades and Shaving

Interesting article . . . dissproves theory of striations and teeth and shows that stropping is in fact a mild honing action.

Or you guys can argue about its meaning.

I am sure this will be argued over :D

PuFF

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Originally Posted by tjiscooler

I wish the pictures were better...exactly what magnification were they using, and how does that compare to the other more common pics? Id love to see this redone with new technology.

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According to the article the photos were taken at 3000x, though on the printed page they were 2000x. The other photos you'll find running around are generally 200x, though there is a PDF of an article by John Verhoeven, professor of metallurgy at Iowa State, that has electron microscope photographs at 3000x that are much clearer and taken from a variety of angles. These modern electron microscope shots are consistent with the photos in the article mentioned in the OP, and also fail to show teeth on a razor's edge.

One interesting thing about Verhoeven's paper is he took shots straight at the edge, and was able to measure the width between the two bevels at the edge, and found that the hand-honed straight razor and commercial razor blade he examined were pretty much identical.

I saw the Verhoeven pics, too bad he didn't think to uue stropping too, it would have been very useful.

Does anyone around here have to ability to take pictures like this?

I think it would be fantastic if a forum member could try to replicate the study and report with their findings on different razors, grinds etc...

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Originally Posted by tjiscooler

I saw the Verhoeven pics, too bad he didn't think to uue stropping too, it would have been very useful.

Does anyone around here have to ability to take pictures like this?

I think it would be fantastic if a forum member could try to replicate the study and report with their findings on different razors, grinds etc...

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I know it - maybe we could all pull [pool] together and buy one of those comparatively inexpensive nikon scanning electron microscopes for the SRP lab?

that would be cool, id love to see this SRP lab! ;)

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Originally Posted by mparker762

These guys were photographing at 3000x like Verhoeven was, except that he was using an electron microscope and took a lot more angles and looked at different abrasives and hones. But he didn't look at post-shave blades, or multi-shave-old-blades and how stropping affected them. So this article expands what we knew from Verhoeven's studies (or vice versa since this article is 80 yrs old).

I've thought for awhile that the strop was abrasive, at least the linen side. I have sharpened a dulled blade with the linen, though it took a *lot* of laps and my arm needed a few days to recover. But in normal use all the strop needs to do is knock off the rust and polish the weakened-but-not-fully-rusted steel below it; it doesn't need to remove hardened steel. But even so, it *is* abrasive in a meaningful way.

I was interested to see the article specifically mentioned vaseline, not oil. Oiling helps me somewhat, but not really enough. I'll have to try vaseline though...

I've been doing a lot of experimenting with stropping lately and one thing I've noticed is that I have been drastically understropping my razors these past years. If I only did 10-15 laps on the linen and 30 or so on the leather then my edges would last about ten days. But if I did 40-50 on the linen and 30 or so on leather then the edges didn't really deteriorate at all over several months (Stainless razors need far fewer laps on the linen to keep a great shaving edge). So I've suspected for awhile that for me at least corrosion was the big edge-killer, and these photos demonstrate that this is certainly plausible. I've also noticed that my linen was turning black after a few months of this, which led me to believe that the material coming off the blade was the black oxidation. I think these photos have also convinced me that a mild abrasive on the daily strop may not be an inherently flawed idea, especially if you happen to live in an area with tap water that causes more rapid corrosion than is depicted in these photo or skin chemistry that causes the same problem. If the purpose of the strop is to abrade away the corrosion, then a little help can't hurt, the trick is to not overdo the stropping in this case.

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As per your advice, I decided to do 40 passes on the linen and 30 passes on the leather. The change has been noticeably positive. The edge is much smoother and finer. I appreciate your many experiments, M. I've gained a lot from them. :tu

one of my old strops on the side with the stamping says honing side

My Grandfather's Shumate (Austin,TX) Strop is of two leathers: the thicker hard one is stamped "Sharpen". The thinner softer one is stamped "Finish". Stopping is not an exact science for me. It seems to work well anyway.