This is a fascinating paper and there are lots of things to be learned from it. But before I tried to make use of any of those things I'd have to ask myself one question:
"Why am I doing this?"
For example the paper does not talk about the actual applications of the blades, nor their edge retention qualities. It looks at the "quality" of the edges entirely in an optical sense, in other words is what it looks like. As I'm a beard wearer, the blade sharpening angles used in the paper are well below anything that I might normally use. This doesn't mean that there's nothing in the paper of value to me, but it means that I need to be careful how I apply it. I don't know for example if a perfectly smooth edge is going to cut what I want to cut any "better" (whatever that means) than the comparatively rough old edges that I normally use, and I don't know if it will last any longer.
cheers for that ged, you have a much greater ability than i do when it comes to explaining things technical.
i do feel that we're trying to say very simliar things.
i've never looked at the edge of any of my blades under any kind of magnification (when sharpening) because i've never felt the need to. to my mind, sharp, when applied to a cutting tool, means "fit for purpose". if the purpose is to take photo's under an electron microscope then a lovely smooth blade is perfect, if the purpose is to carve wood then i'm not so sure that a perfect smooth blade is so good. mr, mears in all his wisdom very clearly states that running a knife along the edge of a landrover window is the perfect way to get a "working" edge. the theory behind that (as far as i'm aware) is that the tiny little serations that the glass imparts on the edge will improve cutting performance. as for longevity i wouldn't know where to start, i'd guess that a slightly rough blade would stay "sharp" for longer than a completely smooth one, but i'm probably wrong.
i think that we all run the risk of massively over-complicating things when it comes to sharpening our bushcraft blades, after all most of us are only playing with our sharps, it's not like we're doing surgery!
cheers
stuart