Bill Tindall, E.Tn.
Some impressive photomicrographs have been shown recently. I thought it could be useful as a stake in the ground to show what can be done with state of the art Nikon metallurgical microscope and a trained operator (not me). The picture is the edge of a titanium nitride coated A2 blade after planing some maple.

the 20X refers to a lens used. It is not the magnification of the picture. These scopes run off a data system that provides a scale on the picture. The wear bevel is 40 microns.