beard stubble

[lothman]

Hi,
this is kind of a selfie, at least a very tiny portion of a selfie some beard stubbles from me.

Mitutoyo 20x; 3µm steps, 170 shots, backlight and LED from left and right.

best regards
Lothar

(link to larger version)

[rjlittlefield]

Lovely -- and admirably free of fine debris!

How did you collect and prepare the specimen?

--Rik

[lothman]

How did you collect and prepare the specimen?

I rinsed my saftey razor in a bowl, the stubbles sank down. I poured the shaving soapy water off. Rinsed with very strong soap solution, then several times with water and finally Isopropanol.

For taking the shots I put the stubbles on a microscope slide and cleaned out some debris using a stereo microscope.


regards
Lothar

P.S.: by the way is there a new approach for the transparent foreground problem in conjunction with slabbing?

[MarkSturtevant]

That is surprisingly interesting! One detail is that different hairs look to have different cross-sectional shapes.

[rjlittlefield]

"safety razor" -- that also explains the cleanly cut ends, versus the crushing I might expect from an electric razor.

"new approach for the transparent foreground problem in conjunction with slabbing?" -- no, sorry, not yet.

--Rik

[PeteM]

As intriguing a self portrait as I've seen. Looks to have been painted by an abstract artist.

[AlP]

Very coooool.

[lothman]

on request here a link to a bigger file

best regards
Lothar

[rjlittlefield]

Lovely! The larger version shows great details of the scaly surface of the hair.

--Rik

[Thagomizer]

Very cool! I thought they were small glass rods!

[jmc]

As someone who used to work in the personal care industry (and in the development of shaving products) that is a very, very fine image. Thanks for sharing.

[lothman]

As someone who used to work in the personal care industry (and in the development of shaving products) that is a very, very fine image. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks, I had a look on research gate of your work. What is the best stubble softening shaving soap in your opinion?

regards
Lothar

[jmc]

As someone who used to work in the personal care industry (and in the development of shaving products) that is a very, very fine image. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks, I had a look on research gate of your work. What is the best stubble softening shaving soap in your opinion?

regards
Lothar

I really wish I could help you with that, but I honestly wouldn't know what to recommend. I shave once a week with a standard razor and prep, and apart from using moisturizer that is the limit of my own face care. Most of my research time on shaving was spent designing and running clinical studies on products, and they were normally kept blinded from me so that I couldn't know what they were. Oh, and running epilator studies - I'm so glad that shaving is the only hair removal I have do myself....