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Smiling?

I've seen this term bandied about here and there with regards to straight blades, but what does it mean to say a blade is 'smiling,' and what causes it? Just curious, and I can't seem to find it in the wiki.

Thanks!
 
Some blades have perfectly straight edges If you put the edge of the blade on a pane of glass, every part of the shaving edge would make contact. Such a blade doesn't have a smile or a frown.

Now, say someone hones the blade poorly and takes more metal off the middle of the blade. If you put the blade on glass, the tip and heel would make contact and the middle of the blade would be narrower and would not make contact. That blade shape is a frowning edge, wider at the ends.

If the honing removed more metal from the tip and heel, on glass, only the center would touch. That is a smiling blade.

A smiling shape is good for shaving, and quite a few blades are manufactured smiling. A frowning shape is an absolute killer on shaving.

As an aside, slicing motions are used a lot by experienced shavers for the same reason that we slice when we cut bread or tomatoes: it increases cutting efficiency. (Do it right, and the whiskers are sliced off, and not our skin!) The smile on a blade, to a small degree, actually programs into the shaving action a small amount of slicing action.
 
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