Thread: Interesting article

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/...bs&Qis=XL#qdig

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.

Two good qoutes:

The theory always had been that the tiny “saw teeth” were bent out of line when the razor was used and that stropping merely bent the teeth back into line again. It was also believed that only razors made out of certain kinds of steel and manufactured in a certain manner could be sharpened by stropping. A widespread impression exists that stropping is useless and ineffective as applied to the wafer-thin blades used in many types of safety razors.

The photographs on these pages clearly show how erroneous these beliefs have been. They show, for example, how the cutting edge, originally a wavy line not at all saw tooth in character, is bent over by contact with whisker stubble. The steel fibers are both bent over and crushed backward (Martin, 1931)

and . . .

WHAT does stropping actually do to a dull razor blade? This investigation proves that its first action is to bend back into place the fibers of steel that constitute the actual cutting edge. It removes the rust formed on the edge and thus restores the blade to shaving usefulness provided the rusting has not gone too far.

The fact that the bottoms of slight nicks are made as sharp as the edge and that the nicks are actually reduced in size proves that stropping has at least a small abrasive action and therefore sharpening effect. This does not mean, however, that prolonged stropping will put an edge on a really dull (Continued on page 139) razor. Only honing will do that for a blade. (Martin, 1931)