Stropping after 0.5um?

OK so if I put a nice even edge on the razor with 0.5um (lapping film), the edge looks very smooth and fine under a microscope...What does leather stropping do for you?

Does it further smooth out the edge somehow? I read the thread about slow versus fast stroping, and all that, so it seems stropping has or can have a major impact on shave quality.

I guess my question is, apparently the finest edges up until fairly recently were only honed to a 8000 level (ala Norton 4000/8000), and I can see the leather strop being used to further smooth and refine that type of edge, which has a fair bit of structure to it.

Now, with many of us using 1.0um-->0.5um (even 0.25um) finishing pastes or what have you, is the strop counter-productive since the edge quality with these mediums is really quite smooth already?

I haven't recieved my strop yet and have had two pretty nice shaves with a blade straight off the 0.5um. So, I'm just trying to learn as much as I can as I move forward.

I have the same question. I used 1.0 micron paste and it looked like this:

In the second picture, I stropped it 40 linen and 60 leather. It seems to look worse. Any clues?

Nice!

OK, I also just recieved my strop (FYI-not a TM!) and had a similar result back in the lab looking under the scope.

I polished to 1.0um then to 0.5um, edge looked clean, smooth, very nice.

I stropped it 10-15 times and the edge was beat to heck! Small little chips and dings, and scratches as AlpinMack showed clearly in his images.

My initial opinionated impressions:

The age of the basic leather strop is an outdated modality!

I'm not even sure what that means, I'm just throwing around some big words...but I'll be damned if I'm going to take my beauty smooth edge and chip and ding it on a rough leather strop!

As I theorized above, I think strops were meant to smooth out a rougher grind edge from "back in the day".

I put the nice edge back on with 1.0um lapping film, and am going to try it at that for tonight's shave. Actually, the edge quality of my Friodur looks smoother at 1.0um than it does with a 0.5um finish.

If you are pasted stropping, I'd say don't follow it up with a plain leather stropping , as this seems to be a rather marked step backward. Give it a try directly off the paste and see if you feel the difference.

Let's see if we can get some broad feeedback on actual results.

Are you saying your actual shave is smoother and more comfortable off the pasted strop or just your pictures of your edge looks better off the pasted strop?
I use pasted strops to finish my razors but still feel like the razor cuts my beard better off the leather strop.

The edge looks nice off the pastes, and shaved nice off the pastes (in my case lapping film). I haven't had the chance to do shaving tests for other configurations, so you are correct in saying that it is a purely visual inspection and comparrison.

Perhaps I should just try and shave with a stropped blade, and see how it feels. But it seems like a step in the wrong direction. The edge off the strop looks like it does off of 3-6um paste/film. Why bother pasting to a really smooth edge (1.0um-0.5um)if your strop sets it back to 3-6um?

If the shave feels better after stropping, perhaps we are oversharpening the edge when we try to paste our way to ultrafine 1.0-0.25 edges? Should we then only paste/strop to a 3.0um finish?

I won't pretend to be an expert, but is it possible that you oversharpened it on the paste?

A good looking edge under a microscope doesn't always equate to a good shave.

Ookla The Mok said:

I won't pretend to be an expert, but is it possible that you oversharpened it on the paste?

A good looking edge under a microscope doesn't always equate to a good shave.

Click to expand...

IMHO overhoning on pastes is not even possible. I do, however, wish to +1 your comment on the look of the bevel. A smooth bevel does not necessarily mean a smooth shave. Edge thickness and fin alignment are much better measures and both of these are not visible with a regular microscope.

Walking in here and saying strops are bad is not something you want to do without body armor.

AlpinMacK said:

I have the same question. I used 1.0 micron paste and it looked like this:

In the second picture, I stropped it 40 linen and 60 leather. It seems to look worse. Any clues?

Click to expand...

A few questions about your photomicrographs:

- in the first photo, why are the striations or abrasions horizontal?
- in the second photo, I would assume that the 45 degree striations are from stropping on leather, since they are not present on the first photo. Why would that be? Could it be possible that you still had diamond paste left on the razor? Why would leather abrade the blade more than 1.0 diamond paste? Lastly, could the differences be due to not focusing on the same plane in the two photos, in which case, the edge comparison may not be reliable?

First ones a DE and the second ones poorly honed straight?

The angle of the light on the bevel can change it's appearance dramatically. If you've got one of those cheap radio shack scopes, put it on the blade and rotate it around 180 degrees and see what happens to the appearance of your bevel. Some angles you get the fabled "black ice", some you get a matte-grey, and at other angles you'll see honing striations you never knew existed.
Some angles you can see the edge, and some angles it disappears in the glare or shadows.

FloppyShoes said:

Walking in here and saying strops are bad is not something you want to do without body armor.

Click to expand...

I just thought I'd stir the pot a little bit!

RayG said:

A few questions about your photomicrographs:

- in the first photo, why are the striations or abrasions horizontal?
- in the second photo, I would assume that the 45 degree striations are from stropping on leather, since they are not present on the first photo. Why would that be? Could it be possible that you still had diamond paste left on the razor? Why would leather abrade the blade more than 1.0 diamond paste? Lastly, could the differences be due to not focusing on the same plane in the two photos, in which case, the edge comparison may not be reliable?

Click to expand...

This is exactly the question I am raising here. I did not use paste in my experiment, I was using a lapping film, where the grit is embedded in a polymer film. So in my case there was little chance of cross contamination, and yet I got very similar results to what was shown above.

The photos may not have exact lighting, but I can tell you I was looking under a research grade Lieca wide field microscope, and what I was seeing was NOT a trick of uneven lighting, the strop simply scratched up the blade.

I'm thinking that perhaps for fine grit finishing, a different strop material may be called for? Perhaps some type of hard backed silk?

If it's not a trick of the lighting then you've got something on your leather strop. Leather is not that abrasive, or else no-one would ever need to hone their razors.

Well, perhaps it is my particular strop (and AlpinMack's too?), it's an Iliinios #127 Not a top-shelf strop, I suppose, but a rather standard model, no?

It was brand new out of the plastic when I tried it, so I do not think it had any foreign objects on it. I used a very light touch when stropping. I was simply shocked when I saw the edge afterwards.

OK, so maybe my strop in particular is a *** (pardon my french). I'm newbie so I'm trying to understand what's going on. I'm also an engineer, so I doubly want to know what's going on

So, answer #1 is maybe my strop is junk.

Answer #2 may be that although leather is not abrasive per se, it does have to be stiff enough to align the steel edge of the razor. If the leather is stiff enough to accomplish that, perhaps it is stiff enough to also take away tiny little chips from a fine edge as well, as I saw, and can be seen in the images above?
"Leather is not that abrasive, or else no-one would ever need to hone their razors."
Well, that's one way of looking at it. However, if my strop is not a particular case, perhaps the reason we need to hone our razors is because the strops are beating the edges up little by little? If we were to use a gentler material could we extend edge lifetime? (I'm speculating here...)

Answer #3 I'll have to spend some dough on a Tony Miller and repeat my experiment. (ah yes, a justification for spending money!)


All that being said, I put a 1.0um finish on the razor tonight and gave it a shave (no stropping). For me, I felt that the razor was a bit kinder to my face than the last two shaves with a 0.5um finish to the edge.

Tomorrow perhaps I'll either try a fabric style (raiding the lapping supplies again in the name of Science!) paddle strop to smooth the 1.0 um edge, or perhaps go to the bare 3.0um edge and see how that feels in a shave.

Bottom line is that all this stuff is cool!!! I really enjoy the quest for a really nice edge & shave. Alot better than simply popping a mass produced blade into a razor and shaving away (nothing really wrong with that either...). It's just somehow satisfying to participate in getting a nice edge yourself.

Seraphim said:

Well, perhaps it is my particular strop (and AlpinMack's too?), it's an Iliinios #127 Not a top-shelf strop, I suppose, but a rather standard model, no?

It was brand new out of the plastic when I tried it, so I do not think it had any foreign objects on it. I used a very light touch when stropping. I was simply shocked when I saw the edge afterwards.

OK, so maybe my strop in particular is a *** (pardon my french). I'm newbie so I'm trying to understand what's going on. I'm also an engineer, so I doubly want to know what's going on

So, answer #1 is maybe my strop is junk.

Click to expand...

I too have an Illinois #127 strop. It was my first one. I am less then enthusiastic about how it performs. I have a Dovo travel paddle strop. I noticed when I was using it, my razors were far better. I have since expanded my product lines to include paddle strops and now hanging strops. My Illinois has been left behind. I have dressed, sanded it, talked to it, and threatened it. It just won't perform as well as others. I also have a number of vintage strops that out perform it.

Also, when I send a razor to a customer, I tell them to do the first shave without stropping first as I ship it ready to shave. Stropping technique is very important. I finish my honing with .5µ .25µ and .1µ chrom ox then strop lightly. This thread has inspired me to check my pre and post stropping under my microscope.

Seraphim said:

Well, perhaps it is my particular strop (and AlpinMack's too?), it's an Iliinios #127 Not a top-shelf strop, I suppose, but a rather standard model, no?

Click to expand...

It's a standard model strop. I've got several of them, and none of them do what yours seemed to do, and I've tried mightily in the last few months - back in early January I took a razor that was beginning to pull slightly, and did over 500 laps on my Illinois #127, and there was only a very slight improvement in the edge (it still pulled, but it pulled a bit less).

All the leather really does is help align the edge before the shave - it may be abrasive, but if so this is so little as to be of little practical consequence. The previous day's shave knocks the edge out of alignment, and using the linen will do the same thing (though the linen side also sharpens the razor). I would expect the sort of thing you saw (though to a lesser extent) if you had used the linen side, but *not* from the leather.

Your speculation about the leather being too harsh is incorrect. We can extend the life of our razors by using a harsher material with noticeable abrasive qualities - that is what the fabric side of the strop is for. This is usually linen, though cotton canvas is sometimes also used, and I have successfully used denim as well. The "harsher" linen works better however.

The only edges I've done where a strop like the Illinois seemed to damage the edge were finished on a very slow 0.1 micron honing medium - and even there the strop didn't destroy the edge, it just took away a bit of the sharpness. Nowadays I tend to strop those edges on horsehide, which has less draw and seems to align the edge while preserving the sharpness. Even edges honed on a fast 0.1 micron medium (diamond) don't suffer from cowhide strops.

It's more likely that the rough edge you're seeing in the second photo is the remnants of a weak edge that was partially removed during stropping, or if there really is some sort of dirt on your strop that left those honing marks then it could be sufficient to damage the edge like that.

I'm still suspicious though that what you saw is mostly an optical illusion. For one thing that first photo is nearly nonsensical - honing marks do not run parallel to the edge. I wonder if the blade had oil on it when you took the first photo, and the marks you're seeing are oil streaks?

more pics!

Thank you for continuing this discussion.

Those pics are not mine, they were posted by another user, which is what is really peaking my interest in this, as it seems to confirm that at least for the two of us, the plain leather strop is a step back from a fine sub 3um edge.

MParker, did you visually check your egde before and after stropping? Or are you going by how the shave feels afterwards?

I'm not saying that a strop gives you an unshavable edge, but rather it reduces the edge quality back to about a Norton 8000 level.

Here's a pic from Tim Zowada's website for comparrison to the after stropping image Alpinmack posted above:

This is the raw Norton 8000 edge:


Nothing wrong with a Norton 8000 edge, it is the usual "shave ready" edge, isn't it? It just doesn't look as pretty as a pasted ~micron edge.

The root of what I'm getting at is just that: I recieved a professionally shave ready razor, I inspected the edge under the scope, and it looked like the Zowada image. I then went through a 3.0um 1.0um 0.5um progression and the edge looked really nice and smooth (Like the Spyderco UF edge) . After I took that edge and stropped it, it was back to looking like the Norton 8000 edge.

That being said, I had shaved with a unstropped 0.5um edge two times, and then went with an unstropped 1.0um edge, and the 1.0um edge felt smoother on my face. Perhaps the reason many people feel that stropping gives a smoother shave is that actually these 1.0um to 0.25um edges are a little too fine for comfort? I'm postulating that the end result is closer to a 8000 edge, and if that is the case then pasting to ultrafine levels is counterproductive.

See? I started the thread saying that strops were causing a bad edge, and were counterproductive, and now I'm starting to think that perhaps ultrafine edges aren't really the cat's meow either...

Are the magnifications the same between images?

Sharpening a razor is a balancing act between have a razor's edge so sharp that it basically crumbles when you use it and having it just dull. Most will tell you .25 diamond paste will produce a harsh edge and give a very close but uncomfortable shave the first few times its used. As far as a leather strop degrading the edge the fact is people have been using a strop for I don't know how many years and I have never heard of anyone saying the shave quality was being degraded in some way unless they were not stropping properly and they damaged the edge. So if you are advocating we stop using a leather strop before shaving I'm afraid history is against you. If your getting a damaged edge better check your stropping technique. I conducted a stropping experiment awhile back over at SRP and I checked the edges on a microscope on a regular basis and I never saw any chipping or degradation after stropping.