Ninja R, on 21 July 2010 - 11:11 PM, said:
Marion, on 21 July 2010 - 09:56 PM, said:
That's probably due to the common mistake of confusing sharpening with honing. And while honing properly requires access to both sides of the blade, if the edge happened to mostly have curled to the side you do have access to, running along a pair of jeans would make the blade edge more straight and actually provide some benefit. It's really just more of a misuse of the terminology than a problem with the idea.
In order to sharpen a blade, you have to create a burr along the edge, then hone off the burr. People think leather strops were just a piece of leather. They're infused with fine abrasive powder. Unless someone's jeans have abrasives on it to hone off the burr (never mind that the burr is never created in the first place), it can't be done. I showed the article to Pops Ninja, who'd taught me how to sharpen chisels and knife edges. He laughed a little, but that's about it.
(Earlier, I wrote "metal sharpening." That's wrong. Chainsaws, for example, don't have to be sharpened the same way.)
But......Lifehacker also got me shaving with a safety razor. I haven't bought a new pack of razors for months. I think I might have paid a couple of bucks for two packs of 50 and got the handle for Christmas.
Upon double-checking for supporting evidence, I've also been referring to it incorrectly. Replace all instances of honing with stropping in the previous post and everything still stands.
Yes, and the point is that it's not sharpening at all. It's stropping, which is just pushing the bent-from-use edge back into a more straight position. Most people that don't know any better call that sharpening, as the blade will perform better after it is stropped. Actual sharpening requires grinding away metal and creating a new edge. stropping is just realigning the metal, which could be done (again, especially due to access to only one side of the blades) with a pair of jeans, even if it's not the most effective or ideal way to "sharpen" a modern cartridge razor's blades. This is why canvas barber's strops exist (Although again, in that case, it'd be far more effective since you'd have access to both sides of the blade to properly realign it).
With the leather strops, the abrasive was added to the surface of the strop simply for polishing the blade. The strop itself is used to fold the edge back to a straighter point in between actual sharpenings. Therefore, with a pair of denim jeans, it should be possible to half-assedly (Or full-assedly if using a straight edge or safety razor so you can access both sides of the blade) strop the edge back into place, providing a better shave than before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strop
http://www.classicsh...590351/4057.htm
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