THE FIN

UKRob said:
MisterG said:
When my first straight arrives (waiting... waiting... waiting!) I can't say that resting it will be an issue! I normally go a couple of days between shaves - unless I really just feel like shaving! The straight shave will be a weekend treat - so it will take me ages to learn.
Click to expand...

I would like to lay a bet - no money involved - that when the RAD (razor acquisition disorder) kicks in, you'll be wishing you had to shave twice a day just so you can ckeck out the latest purchase.
Click to expand...

It a little to late for that :heart: RAD has all ready bitten me I have 12 of them, it would be 13 but I droped my fatboy :mad: shaved twice.£97 down the drain:icon_cry2:
 
Ditched the cartridge in Jan
Since then...
EJ razor
Merkur razor
Connaught sample pack
EJ badger brush
New Forest badger brush
Proraso pre/post
Proraso Shave cream
2 x MWF
3 TOBS (courtesy of TK Maxx!)
And two straights on the way

RAD/SSAD/SBAD has already started!
 
MisterG said:
Ditched the cartridge in Jan
Since then...
EJ razor
Merkur razor
Connaught sample pack
EJ badger brush
New Forest badger brush
Proraso pre/post
Proraso Shave cream
2 x MWF
3 TOBS (courtesy of TK Maxx!)
And two straights on the way

RAD/SSAD/SBAD has already started!
Click to expand...
That's what we like to see :D
 
Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their minds. All minds, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Gentlemen, there is a Fin. And it does grow and change and needs to rest.
 
Johnus said:
Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their minds. All minds, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Gentlemen, there is a Fin. And it does grow and change and needs to rest.
Click to expand...

Absolutely, and I have proof that beyond all shadow of a doubt I have fairy's in my back garden, razor blades do indeed sharpen under pyramid's, and if I refrain from stepping on the cracks in the pavement I am guaranteed to win the lottery.
 
osdset said:
The myth about resting razors so that the edge will magically reform or re-sharpen itself has been disproved, it's rubbish, I have been in the business of putting sharp edges on tools for over 35 years, I can unequivocally guarantee that a chisel, plane iron, knife, or razor that has been sharpened / honed to the nth degree will not improve in the box, drawer, tool chest, or what have you no matter how long you leave it.
It was a ploy by razor manufacturers to get the unsuspecting punter to buy more than one razor, pure bunkum.
Click to expand...

Has it been disproved?
Where are your sources?
The blade doesn't sharpen itself, it becomes re-aligned after being mis-aligned from shaving with it.

I quote this from one of Neil Miller's posts:
"Research by J. G. Pratt in 1931 firmly blew the saw-tooth theory out of the water. He demonstrated that what looked like saw-teeth under magnification was really just the interplay between shadows and highlights, and that even more magnification and better lighting made the tooth-effect disappear and the cutting edge took on the uniform shape of a ribbon of metal. More photographs, taken after shaving, showed this ribbon of metal was buckled, rolled-over in places and generally deformed - it even had chips. He took more photos after stropping and showed that the ribbon of metal had been pushed back into place, and was even micro-abraded to the extent that small chips were evened-out and the edge both lightly refined and polished."

So we have established that the edge becomes damaged from shaving.
We can reform the edge with stropping which is much quicker than allowing the blade to rest.

As I keep saying:
Strop your razor, do a hanging hair test.
Shave, do a HHT, it will score much lower.
After say 48 do a HHT, it will score much higher.

There is your proof that the fin does realign itself if left to rest after shaving!
 
django said:
Has it been disproved?
Where are your sources?
The blade doesn't sharpen itself, it becomes re-aligned after being mis-aligned from shaving with it.

I quote this from one of Neil Miller's posts:
"Research by J. G. Pratt in 1931 firmly blew the saw-tooth theory out of the water. He demonstrated that what looked like saw-teeth under magnification was really just the interplay between shadows and highlights, and that even more magnification and better lighting made the tooth-effect disappear and the cutting edge took on the uniform shape of a ribbon of metal. More photographs, taken after shaving, showed this ribbon of metal was buckled, rolled-over in places and generally deformed - it even had chips. He took more photos after stropping and showed that the ribbon of metal had been pushed back into place, and was even micro-abraded to the extent that small chips were evened-out and the edge both lightly refined and polished."

So we have established that the edge becomes damaged from shaving.
We can reform the edge with stropping which is much quicker than allowing the blade to rest.

As I keep saying:
Strop your razor, do a hanging hair test.
Shave, do a HHT, it will score much lower.
After say 48 do a HHT, it will score much higher.

There is your proof that the fin does realign itself if left to rest after shaving!
Click to expand...

That does NOT constitute proof that is conjecture and FAITH is a get out clause.
 
django said:
osdset said:
The myth about resting razors so that the edge will magically reform or re-sharpen itself has been disproved, it's rubbish, I have been in the business of putting sharp edges on tools for over 35 years, I can unequivocally guarantee that a chisel, plane iron, knife, or razor that has been sharpened / honed to the nth degree will not improve in the box, drawer, tool chest, or what have you no matter how long you leave it.
It was a ploy by razor manufacturers to get the unsuspecting punter to buy more than one razor, pure bunkum.
Click to expand...

Has it been disproved?
Where are your sources?
The blade doesn't sharpen itself, it becomes re-aligned after being mis-aligned from shaving with it.

I quote this from one of Neil Miller's posts:
"Research by J. G. Pratt in 1931 firmly blew the saw-tooth theory out of the water. He demonstrated that what looked like saw-teeth under magnification was really just the interplay between shadows and highlights, and that even more magnification and better lighting made the tooth-effect disappear and the cutting edge took on the uniform shape of a ribbon of metal. More photographs, taken after shaving, showed this ribbon of metal was buckled, rolled-over in places and generally deformed - it even had chips. He took more photos after stropping and showed that the ribbon of metal had been pushed back into place, and was even micro-abraded to the extent that small chips were evened-out and the edge both lightly refined and polished."

So we have established that the edge becomes damaged from shaving.
We can reform the edge with stropping which is much quicker than allowing the blade to rest.

As I keep saying:
Strop your razor, do a hanging hair test.
Shave, do a HHT, it will score much lower.
After say 48 do a HHT, it will score much higher.

There is your proof that the fin does realign itself if left to rest after shaving!
Click to expand...
Hmm,
Any cutting tool will lose it's edge with use, let's use an example the joiners equivalent of the HHT could be to test if the tool, in this imaginary case a chisel, can pare the end grain of a dense timber such as Ebony with ease, if said chisel fails the 'pare test' and is left on my bench while I go off on holiday for a fortnight, I know that without performing some kind of sharpening activity said chisel will still fail the test on my return.
You have mentioned one important process in your post, stropping the edge to re-align it, so your theory is that stropping achieves the same result as resting a razor, it's just a quicker process? In that case we all might as well chuck away our expensive strops, and disregard the tried and trusted methods of the last two hundred odd years!
I prefer to stick to proven principles, one of them is that any tool made from high carbon steel will, if left to it's own devices in any atmosphere other than a hermetically sealed environment will deteriorate over time, it will eventually rust away to nothing, so to prove or disprove my statement I suggest you leave one of your straights on the bathroom shelf for a year, if 48 hrs improves the edge, a year should sharpen it beyond your imagination.
 
osdset, u can not liken bashing a chisel into wood as shaving with a razor.

"if 48 hrs improves the edge, a year should sharpen it beyond your imagination."
Once again, it doesn't sharpen, it re-aligns.

"In that case we all might as well chuck away our expensive strops, and disregard the tried and trusted methods of the last two hundred odd years!"
I'm not suggesting that. In my first post on this thread I have said that resting is a waste of time as stropping over rules it.
Stropping also removes oxidation.
Allowing the blade to rest will not fully restore the edge like stropping, only partially.

I don't see any value in allowing the edge to rest, I strop straight after shaving, oil it and put it away ready for the next shave.
However you cannot deny that something is going on here, enough to be detectable with a HHT.
There clearly is some "memory" to the original shape present within the material.
Think of it like this, the cellophane of a cigarette pack. If you crush the cellophane inside your hand, once you release it, it will start to restore itself to regain its original shape. Of course it will not reach the original shape shape but it is the same principle.

I've made my observations and since I don't have a scanning electron microscope they will have to be good enough for me. Not that any of this effect my shaving ritual in any way!
 
django
"osdset, u can not liken bashing a chisel into wood as shaving with a razor."
Those of us that regard ourselves as artisans with wood are cringing at the idea of bashing a chisel into wood, I can assure you it's a bit more refined than that (in my workshop anyway).
I was not comparing a chisel with a razor, they are two very different tools for different purposes, what I was trying to demonstrate in my feeble fashion is that they both share similarities in terms of having extremely sharp cutting edges, I can actually remove hair / stubble quite successfully with my workshop blades, but I would not dream of applying a straight razor to timber, the physics of honing, refining an edge by stropping, and the merits (or not) of resting an edge apply to both razors and workshop cutting tools.

I like your cellophane analogy, try it with some Tin foil, observe what happens. If you deform a piece of steel it stays deformed unless it's constructed from shape-memory alloy's.

I don't subscribe to the 'rest the blade' school of thought, I honestly believe it's Hogwash. There is also a lot of controversy over the reliability of the HHT, for me there are too many variables for it to be relied on as a benchmark.
 
Comparing the elastic behaviour of a long chain molecule like cellulose with shape memory metal is complete and utter nonsense because all the heat treatment of straight razors is done prior to any final grinding, sharpening and honing.


Stop with the pseudo science you're making yourself look silly.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom