Corking Blades, but different than you think.

I read this old thread with some fascination. I ruined the strop fro m my 1940's vintage Valet Auto Strop razor years ago (it simply deteriorated). As a result, I had to move to Feather SS blades rather than the original carbon steel blades that could be stropped. I have l toyed with the idea of having a custom strop made (it is very thin) but never got around to it. I am wondering if "corking" the carbon steel Feather blades would have an effect like stropping?

BTW, watching the old Auto Strop mechanism working was a little bit Mesmerizing. Interestingly, the carbon steel blades shaved better after about two shaves and some stopping rather than new.

I'm gonna try corking a Strangelet. Should be interesting. Do you drag it just once or twice? On the edge of the cork or barrell?

DE blades are not knives (obviously) and what imparts the feeling of sharpness in a razor blade is the coating for the most part and not sharpness. The former VP of Gillette R&D for 44 years said as such years ago:

...He determined blade sharpness could not readily be detected by the shaver and sharper blades did not alleviate the pain and irritation from poor prep. It turns out that, according to Mr. Shnitzler, the improperly moistened whisker is harder to cut and the hair itself will adhere to the steel, as it is being cut, causing the hair follicle to be pulled with the consequent pain/tugging feeling. A chemical engineer by training at MIT prior to coming to Gillette, Mr Shnitzler's solution to the problem was an organic silicon coating to the steel so that the protein in the hair would not adhere to the steel; yielding a better cutting action with less pulling at the follicle....

http://www.gilletteadjustable.com/contact-us.html

This "solution" of using an organic silicon coating was to address an issue with carbon steel blades. The product resulting from applying a silicone coating was the Gillette Super Blue blade. Just a few years later, the PTFE coated stainless steel razor blade was introduced and Super Blue blades quickly fell out of favor with the general public forcing Gillette to develop their own PTFE coated stainless blade. Now we have blades coated with PTFE, chromium, platinum, iridium, titanium, tungsten and/or ceramic.

Manufacturers still use silicone to coat surgical blades as PTFE can be problematic in the body.

Blade coatings do improve the shave, but blade quality does as well as is evidenced by the advancement of stainless steel blades.

A corked blade, maybe... corked wine, never...

Blades are NOT coated with platinum, chromium, etc. Only the very teensy weensy cutting edge is SPUTTERED with platinum, chromium, etc., and then some sort of proprietary PTFE coating, or derivative thereof, is 'baked' onto the same EDGE and not the blade. When you shave the blades edge is not in essence touching your skin per se, but it is cutting your beard through the PTFE type coating that is only microns thick. The edge is merely hardened with platinum, chromium, etc., to make it hold the edge better. 

In all actuality, I think the stainless steel type is not all that important as far as we are concerned. but if you can find a Gillette Blue Blade carbon blade made after they started using the PTFE coating in the early 70's then you are in for a real treat as carbon steel can be sharpened finer than stainless.

I corked a Flydear and the improvement was noticeable.