Chan Eil Whiskers
Fumbling about.
Lol, yeah I got up this morning and looked for razors in the 19 degree range... and damned if natural selection hasn't taken them. 16 degrees is about the heaviest grind I could find among the 60 or so razors I've still got kicking around. So I honed up and 16 degree blade, and before I started, I read the whole manual instead of the quick start guide...
And is says basically the fulcrum is only designed for use with knives and for other things, it may be best to freehand (what I'm doing exactly) or build a special fixture for lowering the blade (what I've suggested would be best).
Still curious exactly the problem, and I'm pretty convinced it's this:
The blade is rotating downward with the toe stationary in the jelly material in the fulcrum. This means that the point of edge that contacts the media must move outward because it's traveling an arc length on a circle, not a straight path (we call this a rocking or rolling cut instead of a push cut). This creates a sawing motion microscopically... and this is why the overly heavy stropping is so good. It's actually DULLING the razor by removing the excessively thin microscopic teeth that a lighter stropping merely aligns (and generally will be gradually removed over dozens of uses + strops), the same teeth that snag in the media when it's moved in a sawing motion and basically do a lemmings off a cliff scenario, plowing out the big "chip" in the edge. So very heavy stropping, rounds up the edge, which still passes @ very low readings because it's still highly polished and relatively thin (compared to knives and DE blades), while making the razor less likely to crumble at the edge as a result of the sawing motion the fulcrum creates.
Problem is, I like a thin razor and I've got a houseful of 13 and 14 degree ones, also I like my strops and don't trust that I won't nick one if I go hog wild on pressure. The result is the edges can't handle that sawing action.
Went ahead and tested the 16 degree razor and it held up even with the fulcrum.
24g without and 21g with the fulcrum, no chips under 400x from either.
Sad part is every 13-15 degree razor I've tried doesn't survive the fulcrum test... and that is MOST of what I own, but at least it seems without the fulcrum we're good.
I've gotten results as low as 8g with the freehand tests and included media just grabbing random razors off my desk.
Damn, I knew I should have watched that video.
I will read the enclosed material!
Ok, going through my entire collection using this thing. Found 10 razors so far that struggle (<100) with the push cut method... One of the Herders I just bought (the other one works great... not surprisingly, the one working great had REALLY HARD steel, and the one that's having problems didn't) and then a LOT that have been sitting. Going to have to determine if it's a soft steel issue, a corrosion issue, or just that I never put a decent edge on each of them. At least a couple are recently honed, so for them I suspect it's just that the steel is too soft. I'll try removing some depth and see if it's just exterior steel on one when I have time. Still got about 20 more razors to go through, but I gotta head off to work now.
Most of the rest of my collection is in the single digits to 20, with an occasional 50-70 (8k finish or unstropped I'm guessing).
Now we're getting somewhere...