stainless steel

[garyhaywood]

bart or any one else?

i have a puma nos inox. i must of rehoned it 6 times .I have found it to be one of the hardest razor 's to hit the hht. The shave was pull free but still not the magical shave that can be.i have used the new method (dilucot). I also tryed the older method. Things improved with new method then swithching to older one half way through. i guess this razor prefers a little less pressure. i had similar issues with TI's. This razor is much trickier. I took two razors to the same hone and they came up perfect. I'm just thinking hard steel must be the problem.

has any one else found stainless can be little awkward.

 

[Smythe]

Hmmm, I honed a Henckels SS, didn't seem any harder than carbon steel.
However I understand SS is a bit softer than carbon, however it tends to resist abrasion... if the steel is in fact softer you may want to go with less pressure and do more laps.

 

[garyhaywood]

I'm not sure but i thought stainless was a little harder than carbon, may be i'm wrong. this one is frozen steel. it is a high end razor. i went back to coti with one rub of slurry, i then did 10 laps on escher with light slurry then 20 with just water and literaly just the weight of the blade. the shave is much smoother this morning. i reckon i could squeeze a little more out of it. It is said that carbon steel gives a smoother shave than stainless, stainless steeel holds a longer edge. thats only what i've read on forums.

 

[BlueDun]

I'm not sure but i thought stainless was a little harder than carbon, may be i'm wrong.

Actually, alloy steels cannot be hardened to such high hardness as their purer carbon brothers.
But they have higher toughness. Hardness and toughness are somewhat counteracting properties in steel. As ageneral rule of thumb you can say that the purer the steel is the harder you can make it with appropriate heat treatment.
That's why in the old days the sharpest cutting tools wre always made with the pures available steel - that goes for razors as well as for japanese master swords. There are modern steels where you can get both to some extent.

With respect to sharpening it is easier to sharpen a hard but rather brittle steel than a tough steel.
One reason is that the cristal structure in hard (carbon) steel is finer - smaller cristals that is. Thus, the finest physical edge that is theoretically possible is thinner.
Second, and that's the important factor (at least to my experience), you can picture toughness in steel as a tendency to "smear" when being sharpened. Material will not come off the blade that easily and if so it will do it in larger particles.

In a nutshell: stainless steel will be harder to sharpen, cannot be made quite as sharp as carbon steel, but will hold its edge longer than carbon steel blades - and vice versa.

Cheers
BlueDun

 

[garyhaywood]

thank s for that info.

 

[Bart]

Inspite of Rico's excellent info about Stainless, it does sound like a micro-chipping issue. If you could look with a decent stereoscope, you might see a very faint sawtooth pattern developing at the edge. I would try raising the bevel angle a little bit, by applying 2 layers of tape to the spine. On the brittle TI's that works miracles for me.


Kind regards,
Bart.

 

[garyhaywood]

So but adding two layers of 0.15 tape, Do you find you acheeive a much smoother edge?

i will try this for defanate on awakward razors. I no you mentioned it before, for ti . You said you have also used one layer plus another layer for unicot finish.

I like to stick with traditional bevel so i will try two layers.

cheers bart