urmas
Well-Known Member
Hi,
I've read from several sources that the steel behaves plastically at sub-micron level. Natural clay is very plastic substance... so I have decided to play a little with clay. I wanted to see what cannot be seen optically and feel how the very top of the edge is behaving during the "sharpening" process. It was interesting and instructive, I recommend you try it. I'm sorry, the pictures are not very good, because I was in a hurry. Besides, the images, even if they have better quality, do not convey all the information that you see yourself through doing it.
My observations were:
1. The edge is very best just when the sides of bevel will meet together. When you then proceed with honing the edge will be little less nice, not much but little. You can easily restore the very best state of bevel by imitating dulling on glass action and doing some normal honing strokes. Dulling on glass action has a somewhat hidden asset - it smooths out, consolidate the tip of the edge.
2. Outstanding results can be achieved by combining normal strokes with some amount of backstrokes. Backstrokes will give you a finer edge than using normal strokes only. I speculate that this is the reason why the half strokes and Emmanuel's elliptical circles working so well - since both of those methods contain backstrokes within itself.
3. Using backstrokes only will inevitably lead you to weak and or microchipping edge, which is unusable for shaving.
4. You can imitate the microchipping with clay model. Only thing you need to do, is let the clay rawling to dry a little before performing the experiment.
The results are here:
1. The rawling:
2. The first strokes:
3. The initial bevel is done:
4. The stropping is imitated:
5. The dulling on class action is imitated:
6. You see results of a excessive backhoning:
The bigger pictures are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29949251@N02/sets/72157626406048348/detail/
Regards,
Urmas
I've read from several sources that the steel behaves plastically at sub-micron level. Natural clay is very plastic substance... so I have decided to play a little with clay. I wanted to see what cannot be seen optically and feel how the very top of the edge is behaving during the "sharpening" process. It was interesting and instructive, I recommend you try it. I'm sorry, the pictures are not very good, because I was in a hurry. Besides, the images, even if they have better quality, do not convey all the information that you see yourself through doing it.
My observations were:
1. The edge is very best just when the sides of bevel will meet together. When you then proceed with honing the edge will be little less nice, not much but little. You can easily restore the very best state of bevel by imitating dulling on glass action and doing some normal honing strokes. Dulling on glass action has a somewhat hidden asset - it smooths out, consolidate the tip of the edge.
2. Outstanding results can be achieved by combining normal strokes with some amount of backstrokes. Backstrokes will give you a finer edge than using normal strokes only. I speculate that this is the reason why the half strokes and Emmanuel's elliptical circles working so well - since both of those methods contain backstrokes within itself.
3. Using backstrokes only will inevitably lead you to weak and or microchipping edge, which is unusable for shaving.
4. You can imitate the microchipping with clay model. Only thing you need to do, is let the clay rawling to dry a little before performing the experiment.
The results are here:
1. The rawling:
2. The first strokes:
3. The initial bevel is done:
4. The stropping is imitated:
5. The dulling on class action is imitated:
6. You see results of a excessive backhoning:
The bigger pictures are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29949251@N02/sets/72157626406048348/detail/
Regards,
Urmas
