From using _knives_, I can tell you that no matter what Bosseb and Rabidus have to say, the blades ARE getting more dull with every stroke. They've simply refined their technique to the point where they are managing absolute minimal blade impact _except_ on their hair. Skin is a LOT tougher than you might think, and if you're dragging the blade across your skin, you are doing the same sort of work as if you took a sword blade and repeatedly struck the side of the edge with a nylon jewelers hammer. You're folding it over in tiny increments. Flipping it over means those strikes are now happening against the other side of the blade, thus straightening some parts, and folding others back the other direction. This is known as _stropping_
By the time they hit where the blade isn't cutting anymore (for them), I would suspect that the edge of the blade looks more like a saw than the original blade. They'll have repeatedly broken small pieces of the edge off, but other sections will have been polished to replace it by their skin. Again - stropping. Rabidus and Bosseb are hitting with minimal angle, so they're more buffing the edge of the blade with their skin than the normal drag and scrape that most of us do.
@rabidus - if I sent you postage, could you send me one of your 'finished' blades? I have a cheap digital microscope, and an expensive one I can use at a jewelers. I'm sure Bosseb has tossed his old one and doesn't want to dig it out at this point, and I don't want to wait another four months for the next blade I wonder what he could do with a Nacet.
By the time they hit where the blade isn't cutting anymore (for them), I would suspect that the edge of the blade looks more like a saw than the original blade. They'll have repeatedly broken small pieces of the edge off, but other sections will have been polished to replace it by their skin. Again - stropping. Rabidus and Bosseb are hitting with minimal angle, so they're more buffing the edge of the blade with their skin than the normal drag and scrape that most of us do.
@rabidus - if I sent you postage, could you send me one of your 'finished' blades? I have a cheap digital microscope, and an expensive one I can use at a jewelers. I'm sure Bosseb has tossed his old one and doesn't want to dig it out at this point, and I don't want to wait another four months for the next blade I wonder what he could do with a Nacet.