John .. please take the following comments with a grain of salt (perhaps , even .. a 5 lb bag) …......

Observing the cutting edge of my knives was one of the purposes in mind when I purchased my USB microscope. Would you believe .. I found exactly what I expected. i.e. what appears shiny, smooth, & consistent ..didn't.. given enough magnification.

It seriously sounds to me that you've attained the ability to adequately sharpen a knife. YES .. magnification by any means (I prefer a simple high power loupe at this point) is helpful. When I first obtained a pocket knife with quality tempered D2 .. I was sharpening & getting nowhere. I've been successfully sharpening knives for a good 50 yrs plus. Soooo .. what the hey !?!

Under a loupe .. I was able to quickly identify the fact that my “normal” method was only wearing away metal & the shoulder of the cutting edge. i.e. the transition between the surface of the cutting edge & the surface of the rest of the blade. I simply needed to re-profile the cutting edge. And upon doing so .. was able to achieve what I normally achieve in the sharpening process .. a sharpened cutting edge of the tool in hand.

The USB microscope allows easy recording / documentation of a current state of affairs. It also allows recording of results at various stages of a procedure. All .. very useful documentation. Quite frankly .. I've found the 500X magnification to be simply .. too much.

Let me interject a personal observation of “sharpening” .. that being ….... @ any given angle .. polishing the resulting cutting surface results in a more effective cutting edge. i.e. sharpening a tool at an angle of 18.5 degrees (arbitrarily chosen for purpose of discussion) with a 60 grit abrasive tool will NOT provide the same effective cutting edge as polishing the result with progressively finer & finer grits .. while maintaining the same 18.5 degree angle. The reason why is easily verified under magnification. The “rough” result obtained by the 60 grit simply will not “slide” through whatever is being cut as effectively as the polished result obtained from 600 grit .. 1200 grit ..or.. polishing rouge. Just my 2-cents.

What my $11 experiment has told me .. is...............
It provides a working solution for generating documentation ..however.. I do not NEED more expensive equipment to validate what (often) I already know. It is very sweet .. relative to my innate curiosity of the world around me ..&.. my failing eyesight (simple aging).

Again .. @ the given cost & quality .. I believe every science classroom should have one.

Just an opinion ..specifically.. mine.

Dale

Great advise Dale , and I know what you mean about failing eyesight !

I think when I have finally acquired enough equipment and knowledge to pursue this straight razor urge of mine then a microscope will be very interesting . I have a Belgian Blue stone and a Wastikivi stone from Finland is on it's way , both supposed to be good for use with razors and there may well be a Coticule added to the collection soon . I think that I would enjoy looking at the different results with these stones through a USB microscope . Some of us knife nuts sure do get carried away , guess I must be as nuts as most of my friends think I am !!

I think I need one also!  Failing eyesight, even with my glasses on I don't see as crisp as I used to.