microscope and honing - What is good?

I had a hard time honing this particular razor and had to take it back down in grit a few times.. Now it passes TPT and HHT, then I looked at it under a microscope at (my guess) about 400x. One can still see the saw tooth and scratches. what can I take from this? Is it not honed enough, Is it technique, or is any straight razor going to look like this at 400x? I am shaving with it tomorrow and don't know how it will shave. Anyone have any frame of reference? Hair in picture is for a frame of reference. the first pic looks great and as one moves in the flaws are revealed....

That's more like 20x, not 400x. The flaws in your last pic mean you need to go back to your beveling stone.

That edge will likely draw blood. I would kill the edge on glass then go back to 1k and get the bevel set and all the saw tooth eliminated. Stay light on the 1k. More light strokes rather than fewer heavy strokes. What stones do you have to progress to?

1st pic - looks like there are 2 bevels. Could be the lighting.

2nd pic - lots of deep gouges, probably not a good sign.

3rd pic - looks a bit rough.

This guy has some good youtube videos on razor sharping and how best to use your usb microscope.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRMu-WEaFNE

I stop looking for a saw-tooth at around 5x-10x-20x, the edge being viewed in silhouette. Were I to look further, it would never end. Better to invest in a decent soap and concentrate on the lather IMO.

If you get close enough you will always see flaws, but that edge looks like it needs work yet, I see it is laying on a coticule so I would suggest going back to medium slurry and putting some time in. Perform your dilutions slowly with plenty of laps between. At each dilution start with a bit of pressure. This is hard to quantify, but just over the weight of a finger laying on top of the blade. Then at the end of a dilution decrease the pressure to as light as you can go for several laps. Dilute and repeat until you are down to what looks like plain water laps. Then stop and rinse your stone and wipe off the blade to ensure you are truly water only. Do the same just over finger pressure gradually lightening to very light and then pour on the lap count at the lightest stage. ALL coticules require experimentation, but this is a good starting point. You can greatly speed the process by learning half laps and doing them in sets getting smaller each time. 20, swap sides, 20, back to the first side 15, swap ,15, swap 10 etc etc. The lap count number doesn't really matter except to keep them equal on each side. Now the zen part. Try to really feel what is happening at the sharp edge and get familiar with the different feelings as you progress. Time and experience and you will get to where you know what the edge looks like before you look. Stick with your scope for a while and look at different stages. I did this for a long time and it helps make the connection between what you are feeling and what is happening.

Alum of Potash said:

I stop looking for a saw-tooth at around 5x-10x-20x, the edge being viewed in silhouette. Were I to look further, it would never end. Better to invest in a decent soap and concentrate on the lather IMO.

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Depends on the finisher. On coticules, yeah, it's hard to get bullet straight edges past 50x or 100x or so. On film, Jnat, arks, and several others, you can get bullet straight or nearly so finishes at 400x. Even thuri edges get close (tooth, but very fine and regular at 400x, probably bullet straight at 200x, I'd assume). If I ever don't get this, I look at the razor to see if I need to increase the grind angle or grind it back past some corrosion.

Of course if you grind off the edge like you see in that video where the guys honing and scoping (posted here a few months ago... guy was promoting breadknifing the edge mid-hone to make it look prettier under the scope), you can get bullet straight off anything... it just won't be as sharp.

Using a scope is as useful as using the HHT. You must calibrate what you see to how it shaves for you for the info to be of any real use.

Slightly off topic, yet on at the same time, has anyone else seen this video of Mastro Livi uploaded a few days ago looking really rather annoyed about someone suggesting his razor was chip happy, and then his subsequent examinations with a microscope?

He's scoping there at somewhere between 40x and 100x, not 400x. This is why these USB scopes are so annoying, no one knows what they're actually magnifying at. Now you can take that digital image and zoom in further, but this isn't Hollywood. Details don't appear just because you make an image bigger. The detail visible at the pixel size (Or arguably 2x2, 3x3, etc, as you move into more complicated details) of the original image is all you get. And with the optical magnification of these things, that's never going to be anywhere near 400x.

For reference, here is a human hair at 200x.

At 400x, the entirety of your FOV should be a bit under 500microns. It's a very narrow bevel that can even fit in frame entirely.

Seraphim said:

Using a scope is as useful as using the HHT. You must calibrate what you see to how it shaves for you for the info to be of any real use.

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Now right there is some gospel! I like the HHT and my scope, but only to compare ME to ME. This edge looked like W and HHT tested like Y and then shaved like Z. Over time you can make your own correlations.

Had the scope working for a day and then the whole thing went Green Screen! Bummer. Anyway I took the razor back to bevel and did the whole progression again and shaved with it. Shave was sharp and smooth, Not velvet squeegee but close. BBS in 2 passes. I will be interested to "see" the edge when I get the scope back and working in a few days. Its the inverse.. I "know" how it shaves so I can calibrate how it "looks" Comparing Me to Me... makes sense.

Holy Thread-stealing Crap! I wouldn't know where to start defending the gent that sent back that razor to Livi. He makes it sound like he sharpened the blade on the curb and stropped it on the sole of his shoe--at the beach--in Iceland. Later, Denny

The 1000 grit hone commentary is pretty nutty. To me, it just looks like the owner had some staining on the blade, used fine sandpaper to knock it off and managed some damage to the edge he didn't do nearly enough to knock off on a reset. But he is talking about and using a scope prior to stones, after grinding off issues, after stones, after stropping and after dragging it across his face so I fail to see how it how it is thread stealing. As far as the op goes, he has the right idea, just has to see under the scope how the edge coped with the shave.

I suppose one way to learn a scope would be to take a beater blade and purposely create issues to observe with it like burrs, wire edge, heavily convexed edge, chipped edge, scratches on the bevel, etc

Yes definitely. BUT the examples you provided are clearly visible under good light and a 10x loupe. Not knocking scopes at all. I have a veho 400x. It takes more time to focus and get the image to see than I m willing to give up to see it. I suppose if I had a better scope I would maybe use it more.

Mine won't make 400x. It says 220, but seeing as it was a 26 dollar cheapie who knows what it is really producing. I think their best uses are new razors or new hones or for a new honer to use in learning. I think most of us quit using them for edges over time, but I still enjoy playing with mine.

All I have is a 10x loupe and I can usually see an issue with that when something is off. If I can't but it feels wrong, I go through a progression again and see if it resolves. A lot of the time if something is up I find that you can feel it as you strop.

buca3152 said:

Yes definitely. BUT the examples you provided are clearly visible under good light and a 10x loupe. Not knocking scopes at all. I have a veho 400x. It takes more time to focus and get the image to see than I m willing to give up to see it. I suppose if I had a better scope I would maybe use it more.

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Practice looking at the edge at different stages to get an idea of what the edge looks like. Adequate light and moving it around in the light will show you scratch patterns as well as possible multiple bevels among other things. Your eye will get trained over time. Dont sweat it, just keep doing what your doing, ask lots of questions. It takes a little time buddy, but you will get there. The edge you put on today will not be the have all end all. You will only get better. And everything becomes more familiar as you go along. Sights, sounds feeling on the hone, sounds of the stropping etc. Your doing fine and asking all the right questions. Keep em coming! LOL