Problem area - at 50x

[woodfluter]

...Re apparent coating wearing off like plastic...

Could you post a photo of that? It sounds interesting, although on current form I am unlikely to get quite that far.

Probably not right now, but I'll try later.
I don't have a USB digital microscope but do have a good camera and macro lens with extension. Also I have to wait until one in current rotation gets that far. The used ones are in a blade bank and hard to get at!

 

[mblakele]

So just a first and a last picture on this one? Interesting that you chose a CS blade for the second study. Looks like you're going to use the same routine as well?

Yes, that is my plan. Plans are always subject to change, but I did not think I learned much from the intermediate photos of the Feather. Mostly it showed me that I could remove that soap scum - or whatever it is - by stropping. This time I want to see if I can extend the Captain past 3-4 shaves without extraordinary measures. For me, that means leaving the blade in the razor.

I might be able to get a useful image without removing the blade, but so far that seems to be very difficult. Here are some halfway decent shots, for what they are worth. These are almost edge-on, because that seems to be the only angle I can get. But that means everything looks foreshortened. The sharpie mark is on the right side now, because we are looking at the blade 180° from before. The grind-lines are visible along a steep-looking slope, then a line about 2/3 down where the edges come together. Below that we see the other side of the blade, receding into the distance.





I hope I can still see the sharpie mark at the end of the test.

 

[woodfluter]

Mblakele, just to clarify what we're looking at in the above picture...

It appears that most of the brightly-lighted, visible band in the second image is the secondary bevel. Is that right?
It has the coarse grind marks as seen in the face-on view.

Then the smooth part about 3/4 of the way down is the tertiary bevel, which is smooth due to honing and polishing.
So the edge itself is a the bottom of the lighted portion and none of blade's underside is visible below.

?? eh ?? Or so it seems to me.

 

[SiBurning]

Light stropping or corking might make sense for a feather, more so than most other blades. The coating (probably sputtered, and some blend of ceramic, metal, and ptfe) is inconsistent out of the factory, and cracks easily. The stropping might smooth out the rough & sharp parts enough to make shaving tolerable beyond the first shave or two. I don't stop using a feather after two shaves because it no longer cuts, but because it feels awful on my face. My guess is that's due to scratching by the roughness of the cracked coating, more so than any damage to the underlying metal at the edge, which becomes more exposed as the damage progresses. The roughness from the cracked coating is at least an order or magnitude larger than edge chips. As you use the blade, the coating keeps flaking off until the coating wears away almost completely off the edge, so that after several shaves, you're down to bare metal, and the edge chips start to dominate. The angle of your shave will change the percentages--which type of damage dominates against your face. I think it's our tolerance to different kinds of irregularities that moves may of us to toss a feather after a couple of shaves. It's not so much because it no longer cuts hair, but it becomes very uncomfortable to use the way we like it. Based on the suggestions here, perhaps we might move the feather to a gentler razor after two shaves.

 

[mblakele]

It appears that most of the brightly-lighted, visible band in the second image is the secondary bevel. Is that right?
It has the coarse grind marks as seen in the face-on view.

Then the smooth part about 3/4 of the way down is the tertiary bevel, which is smooth due to honing and polishing.
So the edge itself is a the bottom of the lighted portion and none of blade's underside is visible below.

I had a different take on it, but after a second look I think you are correct.

 

[mblakele]

Light stropping or corking might make sense for a feather, more so than most other blades. The coating (probably sputtered, and some blend of ceramic, metal, and ptfe) is inconsistent out of the factory, and cracks easily. The stropping might smooth out the rough & sharp parts enough to make shaving tolerable beyond the first shave or two. I don't stop using a feather after two shaves because it no longer cuts, but because it feels awful on my face. My guess is that's due to scratching by the roughness of the cracked coating, more so than any damage to the underlying metal at the edge, which becomes more exposed as the damage progresses. The roughness from the cracked coating is at least an order or magnitude larger than edge chips. As you use the blade, the coating keeps flaking off until the coating wears away almost completely off the edge, so that after several shaves, you're down to bare metal, and the edge chips start to dominate. The angle of your shave will change the percentages--which type of damage dominates against your face. I think it's our tolerance to different kinds of irregularities that moves may of us to toss a feather after a couple of shaves. It's not so much because it no longer cuts hair, but it becomes very uncomfortable to use the way we like it. Based on the suggestions here, perhaps we might move the feather to a gentler razor after two shaves.

This makes quite a bit of sense for stropping. But does it explain the effect I observed after shave 4? The blade was starting to decline. I cleaned it with isopropyl alcohol and then scrubbing bubbles, but I did not wipe or strop the edge. Under the scope I could see that most of the soap scum (or whatever it is) was gone, and the fifth shave was notably better. Maybe that was a placebo effect? If so at least it supplied the impetus for trying to strop the blade after subsequent shaves.

Anyway I am back on this thread because my last Captain CS is done. For the fourth shave it was a real struggle to get a CCS, even after three passes. Jeans stropping between shaves did not seem to help the longevity at all, which bolsters the "rough coating on Feathers" theory. Too bad: I like the way the Captain CS blades shave, so I was hoping to extend their lifespan a bit. On the plus side the shaves were very gentle on my skin, even at the end when the blade seemed to do more pulling than cutting. I saw very little rust with this blade. Stropping may have removed some water, but I tend to believe that rust varies from blade to blade anyway. Lord applies some sort of coating to the unsharpened part of the carbon steel blade, but it still develops rust around the cutout and the unsharpened edges.

Here is a shot with the blade still in the razor. The sharpie mark is just visible, upper right.



The next image is more like the earlier ones, with the sharpie mark at lower left. The edge is noticeably less uniform than when it was new. There also seem to be some deposits on the grind that were not removed by stropping, maybe a little worse than the sort of residue I was seeing on the Feather after its last shave. But I think in this case the blade was done because the edge was done, and not because of fouling or irregular coating.

 

[mblakele]

The next blade is marked and ready to go.



With a three-piece razor I prefer to keep those glue spots on the cap side. I am still trying to work out whether or not the Gillette Silver Blue blades are good for me: hopefully this will help. I have only used a few GSB blades to date, and each lasted 3-4 shaves. As with the Captain I plan to jeans-strop after each shave, to see if that extends the blade. Otherwise I will leave the blade alone until I decide it is done.

I have switched the razor head from my BRW short comb NEW to a long-comb Made in England NEW, but still using the BRW Bull Mastiff handle. Changing gear weakens the experiment, but I want to put some variety into my open-comb March. Starting tomorrow I will be using a vintage Erasmic stick, too. Anyway here is the edge before any shaves, with the sharpie mark visible lower left.



The edge looks fairly irregular, much like the Captain CS did before the first shave. Some of that may be coating, and may rub down to a smoother surface after the first few strokes. There also seem to be irregularities on the bevel: spots where the coating did not adhere?

 

[mblakele]

The first GSB shave was wonderful: great lather from the vintage Erasmic soap and Shavemac D01, plus smooth cutting from the GSB (1) and the UK long-comb NEW. I could almost call it BBS, but as always I can detect a little stubble here and there. Still it was a very DFS indeed. To celebrate I splashed on some vintage Veg. And I remembered to jeans-strop the blade for tomorrow.

During my shave I was thinking about the Danish razorpit and how it might be relevant to this thread. I have never paid it much attention in the past, but I went back to http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/306177-DE-razor-and-Razorpit, and then found the patent at http://www.google.com/patents/US8246422. It claims to remove shaving residue from the blade, extending its life up to 6x longer than without cleaning (eg, "from 10 shaves to 60 shaves with one blade"). The patent and web site both make claims related to sharpening too, but I am skeptical of that because the indentation hardness of the pit bed is supposed to be the same as human skin. The web site explains that cleaning the blade makes it feel sharp again, therefore a cleaner is a sort of sharpener. OK.... Anyway this made me wonder how different jeans stropping would be from the patented pit technology. The claimed results look similar.



Unfortunately I cannot compare my jeans-stropping results directly with the results in that thread. The control blade maintained DFS for 36 shaves, far beyond the point where I get unacceptable levels of irritation with any unstropped blade I have used. My best consistent results are 5-7 with certain vintage blades, and more usually 2-4. Irritation aside, I think my shave quality would drop down to CCS or SAS before long, and getting there might trigger ingrowns. I saw aspects of that with the stropped Captain (4) and Feather (8). Of course this is down to YMMV: the effectiveness of any blade-cleaning strategy varies with skin type, beard type, and general technique. But maybe someday I will throw a pit into an Amazon order, so I can try it for myself.

 

[mblakele]

After five shaves with jeans-stropping after each, the GSB is still delivering a reliable DFS. It is certainly duller than it was for the first shave, but with some extra effort it still cleans up my densest patches. Previously I have always tossed these blades after 3-4 shaves, due to increasing levels of irritation. So far jeans-stropping seems to avoid this problem, whether by removing soap scum or smoothing out the coating. In another shave or two I think I will be ready to remove the blade and see what the edge looks like.

 

[mblakele]

This thread title is increasingly misleading, but here is my latest report: seven shaves and out for the GSB. I can call today a DFS, but just barely - and I think I had an ingrown on its way, but was able to free it up during the shave. As before I am experiencing much less irritation than I expect from such a well-used blade. Anyway here are the images: first another look at the blade before the first shave:



Here is the same area after seven shaves, jeans-stroppped after each.



This is the opposite side of the blade, which was not stropped.



I think it is safe to say that some of the coating is gone, but on the unstropped side there is quite a bit of foreign material visible: soap scum or other shaving residue. Jeans stropping - really just wiping I think - seems effective at removing this. It may also help smooth out irregularities in the coating, or remove bits that are flaking or cracking off. However it works, for me it seems to extend the life of some blades. I am not sure why it seemed less helpful for the Captain CS: something to do with the initial tip radius of the Captain, or something in the nature of carbon steel vs stainless blades?

Tomorrow I will try an Astra SP. For me these blades feel a little less sharp than the GSB, so I do not expect jeans-stropping to work as well. Here is the edge before shaving:

 

[catherix]

The stropped side of the blade really doesn't seem too bad. Seems clear to me that the stropping helped to maintain it a bit.

The Astra looks to have a nice clean edge to it.

 

[mblakele]

Apparently I am treading ground covered not too long ago by Mantic: text and video at http://sharpologist.com/2011/07/video-how-to-extend-the-life-of-razor-blades.html.

It seems like the best way to extend the life of a blade is to keep it clean, dry, and away from air. This keeps tiny particles picked up from the skin off the blade and slows oxidation which eventually creates chips along the blade edge. Cleaning and drying actions can be combined by rinsing the razor in hot water, then wiping it in the opposite direction from shaving. I use a dry towel but I have seen others do it on denim or even the skin of the forearm. Wiping the blade like this is a form of stropping. By the way, stropping is not really sharpening, its more like polishing off tiny bits of shaving residue from the blade edge and re-aligning the blade edge somewhat. Of course, in the case of a multi-blade razor you’re only stropping one side, but one side is better than nothing.

There are some products that claim to make this cleaning process a little more effective. Razorpit uses a rubber-like surface to clean the blade edge like a squeegee on a glass window. You use a little left-over lather as a cleanser, running the razor over the surface. Then you rinse and dry. Xtenda-blade is another product that uses a treated material to polish the blade surface, though in this case the blade should be dry before using.

This matches closely what I have seen so far, although I found both mineral oil and isopropyl to be ineffective. Also jeans-stropping seems to reduce skin irritation for me. Extending blade life is a topic that never much interested me, because I thought it was not worth the trouble. But jeans-stropping seems to be effective and adds almost no effort to my shave process. I would probably continue doing it for the skin benefits, even without the extra blade life.

 

[catherix]

But jeans-stropping seems to be effective and adds almost no effort to my shave process. I would probably continue doing it for the skin benefits, even without the extra blade life.

Didn't realize it was helping with irritation as well. I'm going to start using your technique when using DE as well and see how it goes. I've never been much of DE blade maintenance either because they're just so cheap that its not worth the hassle. But this technique adds essentially no time to the shave.

Also, not surprised Mantic had covered a similar topic. Seems like something he might look into for us as well.

 

[mblakele]

Five shaves and out for the Astra SP. It began to feel dull yesterday during the fourth shave: still none of that "dull blade" irritation I get without stropping, but I decided to pull the plug. This is still a pretty good result for jeans-stropping: normally I prefer to change out an Astra after the second shave, maybe after the third.

Here was the blade before the first shave:



After five shaves, with jean-stropping after each, three strokes per edge.



The unstropped side of the same blade:



These look similar to previous results: the heavy residue visible on the unstropped side is much reduced by stropping. The dark band just under the edge is probably the coating, and stropping does not seem to damage it.

So far it seems like jeans-stropping helps me extend blade life - to the extent that the blade was sharp to begin with. To test this theory, the next blade will be a fairly dull one: a Walmart Wilkinson. I have only ever purchased one pack of these. So far my experience has been that the first shave is tolerable but the second is too dull, so these are single-use blades for me. I expect this to be a quick test.

As before I have marked the test area with a sharpie, and that will be the cap side. After each shave I will jeans-strop the blade three times, without removing the blade from the razor.

 

[catherix]

It's weird. The blade looks cleaner after the shaves then before to me.

Is the Wilky at the same magnification? Seems like the grind is much larger on this one.

 

[mblakele]

I agree about the way the blades look. I suspect the coatings look rough until the first shave, and then they smooth out. They may even be rough for some skin types. Anyway my equipment is not as good http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/336883-Metallographic-microscope-images so I end up showing more of the grind than the edge itself.

All the images are at exactly the same focus setting on the scope, then cropped and straightened and exported full size. I think the Wilks appears larger because I cropped that image a bit narrower. I uploaded them full-size, but the way images are displayed here, images seem to be shrunk to fit some fixed width. The Astra images are wider, so they shrunk more overall and so the Wilks ends up appearing larger.

 

[76GTfan]

I can appreciate the images, but that is just creepy. No offense intended.

 

[Porp]

Have you thought about taking pre and post prep pictures of your beard? It would be extremely interesting to see the difference.

 

[mblakele]

I have thought about the effects of prep, but it seems like a tricky thing to capture under the scope. Also the scope has to be attached to a computer, and I am not sure I want my laptop next to the sink.

Anyway, as predicted I am tossing the Walmart Wilkinson after two shaves. Yesterday was passable, even though I think the Astra on shaves 4-5 was at least as good. But today was unacceptable, and left me with the first real skin irritation I have seen since this jeans-stropping experiment began. Shall we take a look?

Before the first shave:



On the cap side, which got any benefit from the stropping, I see that the sharpie mark has eroded a bit. It is still visible to the naked eye, but only a dot is in this image. The rest of it is now off-camera.



Unstropped side:



The jeans-stropping kept the cap side pretty clean, and the coating still looks good. But the edge looks awful. Unless it is an extremely strong figure-ground effect, there are actual notches in the edge after just two shaves. No wonder I saw irritation. I seem to be able to cope with a very sharp blade, or with a blade that has dulled fairly evenly, but this uneven degradation seems hopeless. Maybe this is a cheaper grade of steel than the blades we have looked at so far?

Tomorrow I am switching razors, to try out a new acquisition. Thanks to zenless I now have a 1929 New Improved Tuckaway, and I want to test it with my usual BRW handle. I am also getting a little bored of the vintage Erasmic, as good as it is. Because this involves so many changes I am going to load another GSB, and compare it to the last one. Here it is with the usual sharpie mark on the cap side:



I wonder if we are looking at two coating layers here? If the dark band is PTFE, the lighter band might be platinum-chrome or something like that. It looks a bit different than the last GSB I loaded. With the previous blade that lighter coating is visible, but much narrower. I wonder how that might affect the shaves?

 

[catherix]

I see some definite edge degradation in the blade after use. And I can bet that's where the irritation came from as well. It looks worse than any others so far I think.

I wonder if you're right about the coating. Looking at the pics the two blades look much different. I was also thinking maybe its a lack of coating on the edge that we're looking at in the new blade you're using now. Interested see how the shaves to and if it lasts any longer.