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Stropping question

Does stropping on an unpasted leather hanging strop increase the keeness of the blade?

Rich


“All good things arrive unto them that wait – and don’t die in the meantime.” – Mark Twain
 
Using a plain leather strop dresses the edge. It does nothing to sharpen the razor. I realize some will argue that stropping on leather sharpens the blade but personally I think thats poppycock. Dressing the edge makes the blade shave a bit more comfortably and is considered necessary before each use. It also cleans off any minor surface rust on the edge and moisture too. So what does dressing mean? Cleaning, polishing maybe some fin alignment.
 
If you do ten thousand perfect passes on plain leather you might notice the edge is keener. If you drive around long enough in your car the paint will wear down from air friction too.

Sarcasm aside I agree with Thebigspendur. Plain, smooth leather is not abbrasive enough to viably sharpen your edge.
 
I'm new at this, too, but a link to this site was posted the other day, which explains straight razors in depth. I don't know enough to either validate it or dispute it, but it explains that stropping--and I believe they're saying to use paste only to treat the leather, not as an abrasive--realigns microserrations on the edge of the blade. We could get into rhetorical exercises about what "sharpen" means, but while stropping is certainly not honing, to my mind at least if realigning the edge means it cuts whiskers better and is sharper, then it's a form of sharpening, albeit on some microscopic level.
 
If you do ten thousand perfect passes on plain leather you might notice the edge is keener. If you drive around long enough in your car the paint will wear down from air friction too.

Sarcasm aside I agree with Thebigspendur. Plain, smooth leather is not abbrasive enough to viably sharpen your edge.

As you say, stropping on leather does not sharpen your blade; it aligns the fins, thereby restoring the edge. But stropping is not as harmless as air friction on car paint; on the contrary, a poor stropping technique will quickly ruin the edge of your blade.

Hal
 
I'm new at this, too, but a link to this site was posted the other day, which explains straight razors in depth. I don't know enough to either validate it or dispute it, but it explains that stropping--and I believe they're saying to use paste only to treat the leather, not as an abrasive--realigns microserrations on the edge of the blade. We could get into rhetorical exercises about what "sharpen" means, but while stropping is certainly not honing, to my mind at least if realigning the edge means it cuts whiskers better and is sharper, then it's a form of sharpening, albeit on some microscopic level.

I would agree with almost everything that you said; however, pastes are not used to "treat the leather". Pastes do indeed remove metal so they do sharpen the metal and can lead to an overhoned edge if they are used too frequently or with too many passes. I think that "removing metal" is what is considered sharpening, so if bare leather does not remove metal it does not really sharpen it. Sometimes people use mink oil to treat the leather to give more draw, but this is not usually necessary.
 
I would agree with almost everything that you said; however, pastes are not used to "treat the leather". Pastes do indeed remove metal so they do sharpen the metal and can lead to an overhoned edge if they are used too frequently or with too many passes. I think that "removing metal" is what is considered sharpening, so if bare leather does not remove metal it does not really sharpen it. Sometimes people use mink oil to treat the leather to give more draw, but this is not usually necessary.

Fair 'nuff. Like I mentioned, I'm too new to have any sort of opinion based on experience, and I learned long ago not to believe everything I read. I had focused on the statement from the website linked above that said:

Originally, pastes were used to sharpen straight grind blades, such as the Stossmesser. They were never intended to use with hollow grind razors. The use of pastes on strops is therefore wrong. An exception is the yellow fat which serves as a canvas and leather conditioner, causing a slight drag on the edge, which improves polishing.

Which doesn't contradict what you've said.
 
I have never heard that pastes were originally only supposed to be used on straight grind blades and I would be very interested to hear what the writer's source for this information was. It does not make any sense to me why paste (or any sharpening media for that matter) would work well for one type of grind and not for another. What I do know for sure is that today people use all the different types of pastes (diamond, chromium oxide, etc.) on every type of grind and size of razor, and in my experience the pastes have worked equally well on all of them.
 
A couple of sentences before the part that I quoted above is this:

The available strop-pastes are all coarser than the fine hones. However, a strop should be finer than a hone, not coarser. Therefore, the use of paste is at best irrational, at worst destructive for the edge.

So maybe the author's rationale for stating that pastes were never meant for hollow-grind blades has something to do with straight-grind blades needing more metal taken off to sharpen them than a hollow-grind would, so it would need a coarser grit to get the job done, perhaps coarse enough to be destructive to a hollow-ground blade. That's just an uneducated guess on my part, of course, but it also makes sense that a strop shouldn't be more coarse than the hone, otherwise wouldn't it be counterproductive? But I also find myself wondering 1) when was this written, and 2) are there finer pastes in use now than were available then?
 
I just came across this on the Summary page of that site:

Use paste to conserve a strop, but not as a lapping compound. It should have no cutting properties. There is only one good paste, which is the yellow one, which may be used on both the canvas and the leather side. Be sure they do not sell you the white paste instead, because it is not the same as yellow. If you doubt, just use a little olive oil, once or twice a year.

You have to admit, right or wrong, he has strong opinions and states them unambiguously!
 
A couple of sentences before the part that I quoted above is this:



So maybe the author's rationale for stating that pastes were never meant for hollow-grind blades has something to do with straight-grind blades needing more metal taken off to sharpen them than a hollow-grind would, so it would need a coarser grit to get the job done, perhaps coarse enough to be destructive to a hollow-ground blade. That's just an uneducated guess on my part, of course, but it also makes sense that a strop shouldn't be more coarse than the hone, otherwise wouldn't it be counterproductive? But I also find myself wondering 1) when was this written, and 2) are there finer pastes in use now than were available then?

Thank you for taking the time to share the information that you found Bob. I guess that times have changed because pastes are now much finer than the finest hones that are commonly available. For example .5 and even .25 micron diamond paste and .5 chromium oxide are very common, while some of the best finishing hones like belgian coticules, german escher stones, etc are only about 12,000 grit or 1 micron. The micron rating, or size of the cutting particle, does not always correlate to the cutting ability of the sharpening media due to the different shapes of the cutting particles which makes things more complicated. I am getting off track. My main point is that today pastes are generally significantly finer grits than most hones, which is one of the main reasons that people use them. I have read the article that you are quoting and it seems to have been written a long time ago; furthermore, I do not agree with some of his advice. We have different tools today and pastes are a very effective and easy way to refresh a razor or to finish a razor after honing on a lower grit stone.
 

Tony Miller

Speaking of horse butts…
I think that may have been the Boone article which kind of flies in the face of what most people find sucessful. Some pastes are more corase than hones, most are not. Abrasive pastes are not great on hanging strops but strop dressing liquids or pastes are in many cases. While I agree with about half that article the rest just seems off a bit. Maybe some was based on hand me down info from long ago but I think once you try these things first hand you will get results more like the rest of us. The problem with any internet article is people tend to believe the first thing they read, right or wrong. The info at Classic Shaving, my website and a few others is a bit different than the one sited.

Now, sharpening on a hanging strop? What I tell people is that to me sharpening typically means metal removal.....hones, stones, abrasive pastes. A hanging strop "sharpens" for the most part by realigning the fin or basically refreshing the already sharp edge. It's not really removing metal for the most part. You can strop a sharp razor and get it shave ready again quickly but you could strop a dull razor forever and not really change the edge (for the better), or sharpen it. On can however, as Hal pointed out quickly ruin your edge with improper stropping. It can roll that fin over as easily as it can align it in the wrong hands.

The reference to pastes on strop depends on what is a paste? Some strop dressings are liquid, some are fat type pastes in tube. In the old days most were fat type materials in tube, rolls or tin...waxes and greases. Today those like Fromm's are liquids. Abrasive pastes are quite different from strop dressings.

Tony
 
I found Razor Central a really useful resource, but as you say, some of the information such as that about pastes is a bit dated.

I think that the main difference between using an abrasive paste or a hone, is that a honed edge seems to last longer, it is somehow stronger than that formed on a pasted strop. I think the pasted strop seems to draw out the edge a bit, not overhoning, quite, but just a tad, making a weaker edge. Certainly if using a coarser paste, like the Hamon Pere pastes I found. Pasted strops make it a lot easier for the beginner to make a shaving sharp edge however. That was my experience of it, anyway. Once I got good with the hone, I was able to make a smoother, stronger edge, but it takes a few tries to get that light touch you need. Barber hones seem a lot easier to use because of the lather holding the blade down, making it easier to use a really light touch, but they aren't really mentioned on the Razor Central site.
 

Tony Miller

Speaking of horse butts…
I agree with your hone/paste comparison. The pastes are easy for a beginner but won't keep a razor going forever at some point a stone or hone is needed to reset the edge. Maybe it creates a more geometrically correct bevel or something. One compliments the other I think.

Tony
 
Maybe it creates a more geometrically correct bevel or something.

Besides the geometry, is it possible, too, that part of the difference can be attributed to the direction the blade is honed in--edge leading on a stone vs. edge trailing on a strop? I can imagine microscopic tendrils being drawn out when the edge is trailing that would be abraded off when the edge is leading ("imagine" being the operative word here--I may be showing my lack of experience again).
 

Tony Miller

Speaking of horse butts…
Bob,
I imagine much the same thing. I find that when too fine an abrasive is used, say 0.25 micron, that while the edge is initially sharper, it does not hold up as long. Maybe that super fine edge is thinner and rolls over or breaks off faster. On 0.5 micron I'm good for a few weeks. On 0.25 I'm good less than a week before the edge needs work. This may be why chromium oxide works better than going to a finer paste. It is still 0.5 micron but the more rounded crystal shape polishes more at the 0.5 level therby leaving smoother edge than diamond alone would. Going finer leaves a delicate edge.

I like going to 0.5 and getting the edge smoother, not sharper at that point. Some guys report great results, although after much effort, with Arkansas stones. Yes, they are not as fine as a finishing hone but the grains are rounder leaving a more polished, yet maybe not as sharp an edge. Sharp cuts whiskers, smooth makes for a nicer, more comfortable shave. Both are needed.

Tony
 
I think the pasted strop does draw out the edge, regardless of grit size. With a razor sharpened on a strop, the time to next sharpening is measured in weeks, off a hone, in months, for me, and I have tough bristles. I think the hone creates tidier edge geometry that does not break off so easily. But with overhoning, or honing too hard, you can set up far worse edge geometry than you would on a pasted strop.

I think that by drawing the edge together, the hanging (unpasted) strop can improve sharpness over that gotten from a hone. I can hone a razor until it passes the thumbnail test, the strop it and it will pass the hair test. The thing to distinguish is whether we are discussing the removal of metal or the realignment of the edge. I strop twice as many strokes after honing, then test. The next day, I'll strop again before I shave. I found that after honing, sometimes the blade wouldn't shave so well, but a couple more shaves with stropping would "settle" the edge and it would shave well. Now I strop a lot after honing, this doesn't happen, it shaves really well right away.
 

Tony Miller

Speaking of horse butts…
Steerpike,
I too find that an edge seems to mellow or settle a bit after a few days. Maybe thestropping (unpasted) mellows out the microserrations a bit or simply aligns them better. if it is solely alignment I wonder if more stropping the first time, right off the hone or pasted strops would hasten this mellowing. Instead of the usualy daily 25-30 passes, maybe 50 to 60 for the first shave after honing would achive the same effect as a few days time of normal stropping.

Back to Boone's comments on pastes...... maybe it was based on old time pastes in tube like Dovos. The red and green are 6 micron and 2-4 micron, this may in fact be more coarse than the hones he was describing, therefore making his comments right on.

Tony
 
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