This may be the edgiest thing I’ve ever posted here–note the electron microscope work. This is a really neat read for my mechanical engineering and material science peeps.

There’s plenty more experiments here, including SEM images: https://scienceofsharp.wordpress.com/

Haha, very cool.

I just skipped to the end to see what their conclusion was:

The major conclusion of the study is that of the three honing methods studied, the best method for removing thebur and setting the edge angle is clearly a final polish on leather loaded with a polishingcompound such as the chromium oxide or diamond compounds used here.

This is very useful to me as I struggle quite a lot with adequately sharpening my knives and it’s hard to navigate through all the bullshit from the “online experts”.

There’s lots of fun stuff in some of the shaving forums on both safety-razor blades and straight/cutthroat razors sometimes also involving electron microscopes.

There is also this book by Verhoeven for all who want to understand steel and what’s going on when hitting it with a hammer while it’s hot.

Edit: There’s also a German translation called “Stahl-Metallurgie für Einsteiger: Komplizierte Zusammenhänge verständlich erklärt” which is highly regarded.