05-01-2018, 11:10 AM
The answer to your question Mark - No. Not even close and you've already identified the reason why. Quite frankly a brand new DE razor blade doesn't leave my thumb with the sensation that it is particularly sharp. It is though and one short linear motion down the edge would prove it. A 200 toothy edge immediately sends chills. Unfortunately a 300 toothy edge does as well. I'm equally unqualified when it comes to cutting paper. I struggle sometimes to get a DE blade started but can just slice away with a 200 toothy chef's knife.
While we're on that subject, I ran across an old Popular Science article some time ago (sorry, could have been Popular Mechanics) (maybe 1970's) about an engineer who was consulting to the meat processing industry. He was trying to devise a means of testing edge sharpness. He rejected common papers as a test media due to what he described as "tear propagation". In this case, tear propagation was described as being sort of a self-sustaining force that, once initiated, worked somewhat independently of the edge to separate the paper. He ended up using paper embedded with a cross-hatch webbing to counteract the tear propagation.
While we're on that subject, I ran across an old Popular Science article some time ago (sorry, could have been Popular Mechanics) (maybe 1970's) about an engineer who was consulting to the meat processing industry. He was trying to devise a means of testing edge sharpness. He rejected common papers as a test media due to what he described as "tear propagation". In this case, tear propagation was described as being sort of a self-sustaining force that, once initiated, worked somewhat independently of the edge to separate the paper. He ended up using paper embedded with a cross-hatch webbing to counteract the tear propagation.