Does anyone ever think an edge gets better with usage? I do. Even the hht gets better with stropping and moving the metal over time. For example fresh off the stones with a very fine diameter hair can be a solid 4. Over time With stropping and moving the metal hht 5. Btw I use very very fine hair extensions 'remey' very small in diameter hair. I make the test 'hard' so its not a parlors trick if you go about it correctly.
Could you pick the finisher in a blind test?
- Thread starter Tomo
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Steve56
Ask me about shaving naked!
In general no, but there are a lot of different steels and a lot of different finishers, all with different qualities.
My guess is that you’re wearing off a small fin or unstable edge that’s the right size that stropping can correct.
If you see this kind of behavior, try adding a layer of tape when finishing and see if the result is different.
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- #23
I think it’s also possible that over time strops can become contaminated with abrasives. Fine slurry dust and/or diamond particles from stropping after honing for example. It’s possible that small amounts of these fine abrasives could have a beneficial impact on an edge.
Also linen and leather contain silica, which makes even a clean strop very slightly abrasive. Only a tiny bit, but maybe enough to be noticed after a while.
I respectfully disagree, pal. No i don't shave with visible significannt wires, thats a very particular OCD subject for me! Imo theres always a wire depending on how much magnification your using, 99% of that burr is gone its as if you honed it as clean as you (or anyone) possibly can , meaning that 1% is so small its almost non-existent. Now i have before, and sometimes i still may, i check my edge after First shave and it tells me if i have ' fin' . I get my bevel as clean as my magnification and lighting tells me . If you have a wire (significant one) shave test then examine the edge, if you see flappy weak steel thats all over the place then you didn't hone down to strong steele' . Meaning one shave should not tare up an edge (with decent steel and healthy bevel angle) and move it all over the place.
I am referring to getting a solid hht-4 straight off the hones. And after say 4-5 shaves and stropping sessions it most of the time (hht) seems to get better sometimes a 5. My point is clean leather and linen do actually give positive effects towards the razors steel . Leather has silicates, and linen (flax) has silicon dioxide. Fresh off the hones i strop 60 linen 100 leather, but normal stropping i do 40 60. So if i shaved with the edge 3-5 times (then i have stropped,500 times in total in those 5 shaves) some type of melted/burnishing/plastic deformation happens to the apex in a positive way. If your edge got worse every shave, then you would not have gotten, 100+ shaves from that Sub Cero. Just saying
After a couple more days of comparison shaving I changed my vote to maybe, and even that's rather optimistic. This morning I used a fresh coticule edge and a trans ark edge with maybe 4 shaves on it. They were a little different but a lot more similar than I would have guessed going in. Confirmation bias is definitely a thing.
Stropping does have an impact too...the longer you go the more generic the edge feel becomes in my opinion.
Stropping does have an impact too...the longer you go the more generic the edge feel becomes in my opinion.
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