I'm sure the Emperor will need to buy new clothes...
... or already has.

Stitchawl
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I'm sure the Emperor will need to buy new clothes...
Sharpening doesn't require an SEM to check edge refinement. I doubt too many people using a 10k stone require studying their edges even with sufficient light microscopy to adequately resolve that scratch pattern. Clearly even a quarter micron or 64k scratch pattern is beyond the limits of clearly resolving with light microscopy. And the scratch pattern of a strop - leather or even newsprint is beyond light microscopy limits. At 500x looking at a scratch pattern simply shows a reflection of the scope's objective lens using nanocloth with 0.125 or eighth micron CBN. People have been using natural stones for years and have not needed to observe the scratch patterns. Primarily the means of observation is observation of improved cutting performance. This is defined in a task specific manner.
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Ken
Everyone else on this thread is having a fun conversation about the topic.
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Ken
HeavyHanded,
We are in the same ballpark - .2 or .25 microns. With oil immersion as you say depth of field is quite limited vs an SEM with great depth of field. And looking at edges vs a planar surface further confounds the effort, especially if there is some degree of convexity to the edge's surface. Typically oil immersion objective lenses are in the 40x range. If you are looking at the particulates rather than the scratch pattern, then you are getting abrasives in the oil in contact with your lens. All in all a PITA. I ignore using oil immersion if I can. Also it is difficult to 'build' a stack of images to get increased depth of field with an oil immersion lens.
The biggest problem with SEM is the specimen size that will fit in the vacuum chamber of the SEM. Also because of the high vacuum levels the handles of knives will leak gas into the vacuum. This outgassing contaminates the vacuum. This is one reason why you see SEM studies often using razor blades for samples (eg Verhoven's studies). But the depth of field even at relatively low resolution makes viewing images real attractive. TEM gives limited depth of field but it is relatively straightforward to stack a series of TEM images into a volume and perform isosurface generation to elucidate a 3d structure from the dataset.
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Ken