Thread: interesting thing dawned on me today....

I know it sounds crazy but the 1k seems to leave some "teeth" on the edge that really cuts the whiskers without hurting the skin. However, the CrO balsa or leather for 40 or more laps followed by leather only for another 100 produced a surprising result. Of course I still prefer my 4k, 8k, and 12k stones, but it certainly confirms the DE credibility at this level. Our edge at 1k is also without the benefit of the coatings used on the DE as a final "smoothing" step. I look forward to your feedback.

Could this be murray carter by any chance? Lol

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No I am not Murray Carter.
But I do own one of his excellent hunting knives. I suppose if I were going to shave with it I may consider his sharpening method, but it is not what I use on my razors.
Besides, even Murray doesn't attempt the 1k level shave. He finishes with 6k then a lot of newspaper stropping before attempting to shave with a knife.
The razor angle is much more shallow and gets considerably sharper than a knife at the 1k level, especially with very light final strokes in the stropping direction.
Try it for fun...you may be surprised at the results.

Originally Posted by str8fencer

You could always just try to shave directly off the stone, omitting the stropping. That would show you exactly what is gained from the stone, and what is from the stropping. I have shaved directly off most of my hones, it is quite interesting and rarely very uncomfortable.

Yes, I have read of this and done this, once. So only on one razor. It was not a bad shave at all, not even overly harsh (my first few shaves are "harsh" after honing). My theory is that with stropping, you're re-aligning. With honing, it's more forceful than stropping because you're putting the edge's face, only one side, in contact with a hard surface, and of course it's edge-first not spine-first when done conventionally (my apologies to MC aka gammaray (I had the same suspicion!)). But in theory you could just lightly refresh an edge on your finisher with far fewer laps than for stropping, but of course you're removing just a little metal, revealing fresh metal so it's not the same. But the idea is that you would also be re-aligning the metal very efficiently (or removing the worst offending misaligned "teeth"). In my head, straight off the hones I'm dealing with an edge which could be fairly aligned, but the teeth are oh-so-subtly pushed in one direction from the last stroke off the hone.

Holy Bat Sh!+, Gamma

I cannot believe how absolutely correct you are regarding the shave from a 1k stone. I used the Chosera 1k, CrOx balsa and stropped. WOW!!!

It's not 100% but it is in the 90th percentile for a close shave. You really have stimulated my creatve juices with your off-the-wall suggestion about shaving directly from the 1k.

It seems that I now have a shameful bunch of finish hones I DO NOT NEED.........................

I've been str8 shaving for 45 years and did not know it could be done. That just goes to show ya!!!

JERRY
____

Jerry I am sorta suprised that you haven't read about the 1k shaves in the past...

You can skip all the stropping BTW and still get a shave...

These experiments came up several years back to prove that actual shaving sharpness was attained at a much lower grit then many originally thought...

Seems a properly set bevel is important
People who reckon their shaves are harsh off the 12 or 16 k's should try a 1k shave.

Originally Posted by mrsell63

Holy Bat Sh!+, Gamma

I cannot believe how absolutely correct you are regarding the shave from a 1k stone. I used the Chosera 1k, CrOx balsa and stropped. WOW!!!

It's not 100% but it is in the 90th percentile for a close shave. You really have stimulated my creatve juices with your off-the-wall suggestion about shaving directly from the 1k.

It seems that I now have a shameful bunch of finish hones I DO NOT NEED.........................

I've been str8 shaving for 45 years and did not know it could be done. That just goes to show ya!!!

JERRY
____

I LOL at your response. Very funny. I am delighted that you actually performed the experiment. You are correct in your assessment. The SR at the 1k level is not 100% but it is amazingly close. The infamous Feather blades can stop at 900 grit because the final incident angle is so much lower than our ~7 degree limit. With final coatings the sharpness of almost any reputable DE is truly impressive. The SR benefits from the higher grits because our final angle is higher and we have no coatings. So while this is an amazing exercise to try, I am sure you will want to continue to take full advantage of your impressive honing collection in the eternal pursuit of SR edge perfection.

Jimbo,
I think you are quite mistaken. No matter what ANYBODY says, leather removes metal from a blade. You could even probably get an edge onto a blade without stones. Just strops and pastes (ofc there would have to be a bevel). I do think this is a most interesting issue though.

I am not sure to which response you are responding.

But I agree with you that any material can eventually remove metal given enough pressure, strokes and time. Leather is arguably the finest grit we finish with estimated at 60-90,000 grit from the molecular compounds impregnated into the leather naturally and through the tanning process.

Using leather alone to refine a poor bevel would probably take many hours of contiunous work, maybe even days, but I must concede that given enough time some metal can be removed albeit very inefficiently.