What a microscope showed me about what shaving does to my edge

[Herrenberg]

There looks to be a micro bevel on the razor, which I know practically cannot be the case. What happened there?

This type of damage can actually be seen with a 10-12x loupe (a really good one) when the steel has problems (really major ones). It is exaggerated, so visible on lower magnification, because the edge collapses faster. This doesn't relate to your experiment directly, but it does prove that the damage pattern matches. Hence, yes, hair is damaging to the steel, in that exact pattern, there is no doubt about it.

I feel you should also try to finish the razor on a finishing stone only, and not use pastes and sprays in your stropping routine.. If possible - and then compare the results.

Best of luck!

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Thanks. I don't know what the thing that looks like a micro bevel is, but microscopy, and interpreting what you get from it, seems to be a bit of a dark art, at least when you're not looking through a glass slide. The lighting is finicky, and the more so the higher you get in magnification. I'd bet that that apparent pattern would vanish if I rotated the razor just a bit (which is of course hard to do) so the light shone on it a bit differently. I may have to experiment with other lighting to supplement the ring light that's on there now. Of course it's possible that the pattern represents something real, but, as you say, an actual microbevel seems very unlikely.

The finishing stone only idea seems good. I can always do the pastes later, after I've gathered the data I want from stones and unpasted leather.

 

[bluesman 7]

Sometimes it's better not to look too closely at your SR edge. Ignorance can be bliss. I stopped worrying about my "huge" chip and continued shaving with that edge and maintaining it after every shave with about 50 laps on a 0.1um hanging balsa strop. After about 20 to 30 more shaves with that razor, there was no chip to be seen.

I was going to remove the chip. reset the bevel and work all the way up. But I'll try just giving it time and seeing if ongoing use of the pasted balsa will remove it.
[/QUOTE]
This^^^ is what I'm most curious about.

As far as ignorance being bliss. I don't know why more information would ever be a negative, Just because you know a chip is there doesn't mean that you have to do anything about it. Of course it could effect your objectivity

 

[LJS]

I mean the real thing. It took me a while to learn the difference. "Digital microscopes" zoom in by increasing the size of pixels. Microscopes do that optically.

What scope and optics did you end up with?

microscopy, and interpreting what you get from it, seems to be a bit of a dark art

That’s funny but I understand what you mean. Actually I think it is more about training and experience than art really. Most aren’t familiar looking at the world at (a) that scale and (b) that plane. People expect to see a blown-up version of what we see with our eyes but really the focus of the scope is in planes. Because of this you see most folks who work at a scope on the bench constantly moving the stage/objectives so they are viewing all over. I have setup and run quite a few labs with a lot of bench trained microbiologists so I have a fair bit of experience.

I have been shaving with straight razors for a long time. I have some extremely expensive microscopes like zeiss leica olympus etc that were all well into the 5-figures when new - standard, inverted, phase-contrast, all sorts of fancy wares........but I have never put a straight razor on a scope. Never needed to I guess. Learned to hone on my own long ago and learned to see enough with a loupe and feel enough with my skin and face it was just never necessary.

 

[Ron R]

I bought a Andostar USB 500 2MB with the stand and all the little attachments, very good and one with more MB would be better I suppose for detail. This little devise I used it for many other things also for health applications and of course razors and blades.
I have a good loupe, but the usb microscope is far better for these older tired eyes.
No doubt there are better USB Microscopes out there, but I'm not into straight razors like some fellows. A stand is sure a nice feature also to examine things in a static state or dynamic moving across something on a lap top screen looking for imperfections.

This a Gem blade with damage from stops.............worn blade from roughness.......A ingrown last year that gave me grief.

Have some great shaves! Stay & think safe in these times.

 

[Herrenberg]

What scope and optics did you end up with?

It's this one:

https://www.amscope.com/3-5x-180x-trinocular-stereo-microscope-with-4-zone-144-led-ring-light-and-10mp-camera.html

 

[kohalajohn]

Whew, I'm glad I got into straight razors, and am avoiding all the expense of disposables. This hobby saves so much money....

 

[Srdjan]

Ignorance can be bliss, but it can also be the cause of irritation. Sometimes I'll hone, and checking through the loupe everything will look fine, but the shave ends up being harsh. At that point I assume there are too many micro teeth/chips I'm not able to see, so I kill the edge lightly and go back to mid-range and finish again. This almost always solves the problem. Wish I had a scope to actually verify this - not that I think it's required, but it is just curiosity I guess.

Question for the OP, and all you with real scopes and experience. Because at such high magnification, the depth of field is extremely shallow, do you tilt the razor slightly, to get the bevel to be almost parallel to the lens, i.e. to really isolate and focus on the bevel plane?



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[bluesman 7]

do you tilt the razor slightly, to get the bevel to be almost parallel to the lens, i.e. to really isolate and focus on the bevel plane?



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I have a simple fixture for holding the bevel reveal close to flat, but at least as important is the angle of the lighting. Here is a good thread on this;Why high magnification scope shots can often be tricky or even misleading - https://www.badgerandblade.com/forum/threads/why-high-magnification-scope-shots-can-often-be-tricky-or-even-misleading.438517/

 

[Srdjan]

Thank you - so a jig is required. I read you spoke about a demagnetizer there as well, which is a great point. A magnetic jig is probably the easiest to make and the most reliable, provided the razor can be demagnetized later.

Also there are many fine points about the lighting there - not only relevant for scopes, but for simple loupes as well. I personally like looking at the edges through a B&L 10x or Belomo 10x in broad daylight.

Man, reading threads like this really makes me want to buy a proper microscope.

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[bluesman 7]

My fixture is made with foam board and double stick tape. About 2 minutes

 

[JohnEzra]

My fixture consists of a bic pen to prop up the scales to get the angle right... I think I need to upgrade.

 

[Herrenberg]

I suppose I had not properly appreciated how much saying "I'll hone this razor and put up microscope pictures" is like saying "I'll do sit-ups for 4 weeks and put up Speedo pictures," but I don't care. I'm in it for the learning. I've already learned a lot from the responses in this thread, and have been gleefully sitting on my hypothesis of the problem that I presented initially, which I will get to at some point. And I've learned a lot from honing while monitoring progress with the microscope. How could I not? It's such a ruthless arbiter.

I'm not done yet. I admit that I would be done, or rather done enough to go on to the next stone, were it not for the merciless eye of the forum on my progress. But I will show where I am.

What I have, I think, is a middle that is beautiful on both sides.



The heel sides are not bad -- it's hard to imagine that any non-microscopic test would find flaw, but still discernably not quite as good:




The pit annoys me, of course. It looks like the effects of Alien blood, but I assume it was a tiny droplet that lingered too long.

The toe is another story, and the reason that this is a work in progress:





Here we have an appearance of what Srdjan thought might be a microbevel, but which seems likely, given the circumstance of a clearly-unfinished honing area, to be something in the range between a burr and an uncompleted apex.

You can see that this part of the bevel has been barely reached on one side, and has not extended to the edge on the other. That's where the work remains, before I can go on to the next stone.

Lessons I've learned so far:

Diamond, even vitrified diamond, is not a good choice for bevel-setting on a razor. There are too many rogue deep scratches outside of the nominal grit.

Vitrified diamond stones come flat, so they say, and I'm sure they do. But flat and razor-flat are two different specifications, and it turned out that getting to the whole bevel with the diamond stone was no indication of how it would do with a really-well-flattened waterstone. No more diamonds on razors for me. In retrospect, I don't know why I even considered it. I guess it was the allure of the stone that would almost never go out of flat. But there's flat and there's flat, and I need the second kind.

 

[JohnEzra]

Interesting thread. I was hoping for something along these lines just yesterday.

I often hear of people touching up with just .1µm paste or a periodic 12k or other finishing hone, and claim to be able to do this indefinitely.

I often go ~100 shaves before hitting anything other than clean strops. After ~100 shaves, honing seems to bring out all the damage from those ~100 shaves and I usually go down to 3k to get rid of the damage.

I have often wanted to see an edge that was maintained with only fine pastes or just a periodic finisher after ~100 shaves to see if the fine finishers are actually keeping up with the damage done with normal stropping and shaving. I posit that in the end the same amount of steel needs to be removed for a given amount of shaving whether it be with an often used fine medium or a periodic 'full' honing session and question whether that is possible with such fine finishers. Of course all of this is totally subjective as we all shave and maintain our razors differently

I have had this same thought recently. I am doubtful that stropping on .01 micron diamond balsa will remove enough steel to keep up with the wear and tear from daily use, and have yet to see any hard evidence that the edge will "last forever" when maintained this way, only people's anecdotal evidence.

I really want to experiment and scope the blade after every shave, and see if I'm correct in my assumption that the balsa method just doesn't keep up. I haven't, and probably never will because that would involve at least a month of daily shaving off "The Method" diamond/balsa edges which would be miserable, and I just can't put myself through that harsh of an edge that many times in a row.

 

[Herrenberg]

I have had this same thought recently. I am doubtful that stropping on .01 micron diamond balsa will remove enough steel to keep up with the wear and tear from daily use, and have yet to see any hard evidence that the edge will "last forever" when maintained this way, only people's anecdotal evidence.

I really want to experiment and scope the blade after every shave, and see if I'm correct in my assumption that the balsa method just doesn't keep up. I haven't, and probably never will because that would involve at least a month of daily shaving off "The Method" diamond/balsa edges which would be miserable, and I just can't put myself through that harsh of an edge that many times in a row.

It's 0.1, not 0.01, but I too am very curious about that point. It defies intuition that that regimen could keep up, but I don't and can't rule it out. Of course there are complexities that make the whole thing really hard: different shave angles, different harshness of beard hair, and so on. But why not try to figure it out anyway?

I do not find "The Method" edges to be harsh; I find them to be keener, which has certain implications for my shave. I must take more care to avoid being cut. Zero pressure becomes not a goal, but a mandatory prerequisite. The shave takes longer, because more care and deliberation is required. The reward for all of that is a BBS shave, even on my valley-filled, sideways-hair-growing neck, if I take the care and time to make one.

Everyone's skin is different, though, so YMMV.

The experiment you describe is not quite the one I'm doing, but they intersect.

1. Hone, take pictures
2. strop (leather only), shave, take pictures
3. Repeat step 2 until the experiment completes or the shave becomes unendurable, then pick representative pictures and post them here.

I'm at the point of having done one shave, so I have a ways to go, but it's all in progress.

 

[Herrenberg]

The experiment has come to a close. I didn't get all I wanted out of it, but I got things.

I was able to last 6 1/2 shaves with a regimen of only stropping on bare leather before the next shave. It was 6 1/2 because the last one was uncomfortable enough that I didn't want to continue after the first pass direction. My dedication to science hit its limit.

When I went to explore under the microscope, I found that the reference right-after-honing pictures I had taken were in poor focus. The new pictures looked very much like the "Gem blade after 10 shaves" pictures posted above, just a bit torn up, but it was enough to make me not like the shave. Being used to The Method edges has spoiled me, maybe. One slight tug and I'm out.

What there was not was any of the heavy heel-and-toe damage that showed in the picture in the top post. I said I had a theory about that damage, and I was a little surprised that no one mentioned the possibility. Of course, I had multiple large advantages:

1. I had seen this razor under magnification after honing, and I knew it did not have that damage then. That was the biggest reason I got the microscope, so I could see clearly when the scratch pattern had extended to the whole edge.
2. I had seen one other of my razors with the exact same heel-and-toe pattern of damage
3. I knew I had a lot of experience with edges, but was a newbie at straight razor shaving
4. I knew I used the heel and toe a lot, to get into neck hollows

You can probably guess my theory at this point: that I was using too high an angle when using the heel and toe on my neck hollows. Strongly suspecting this at the start, I was already taking the trouble not to shave that way, so the damage pattern did not show up. So at least I have a pretty good idea that I've corrected my shortcomings in this area.

My other conclusion is that I really need to whomp up some sort of jig to help me take better microscope pictures.