Happy Friday, gents. I'm curious to hear how much stropping you all do after a coticule honing. I'm always surprised at the difference a good stropping makes on a coti edge; but sometimes, I wonder if perhaps I should have spent more time on the stone instead of trying to coax out that last bit of keenness via stropping. Thoughts?
How Much Stropping After Coti?
- Thread starter The Don
- Start date
I mostly do a Jeans (because i don`t wear Linen usually
) stropping after i reached about HHT 1 on the Coticule, followed by some Palmstrops. Then usually the HHT went up to 3-4. If this works, i go in the bathroom, strop about 25-35 times on (untreated) Linen, and go to the leather about 50 times.
In most cases HHT 5 is possible.
Btw. HHT testing totaly depends on the hair is used.
Greets Sebastian.
Prob no more than 25 laps on linen or similar and maybe 3x that on leather.
I find a coti edge benefits from a bit more time on linen before moving to leather compared to say a jnat finish. For me, my coti edges usually see ~75 linen/ 50 leather. Subsequent stroppings get less.
I do roughly 40/60 linen leather normally.
I'm a little strop crazy so I am in no way saying what I am doing is mandatory or even helpful, but I will commonly do 80 laps on linen followed by 100 on leather. Yes,,, I know that is excessive, but when I get that Horween cordovan under my blade I don't want to stop! No pre & post shave is more like 40/60.
60 natural linen 60 cordaven, I believe I have same strop as brianskeet. Pre shave 20/40. Tryed leather only, still felt I needed linen .
gary
gary
30/60 linen/leather
How did you all arrive at the lap counts as given?
I start getting hht3-4 after 30/60 so I figure it's good enough
I follow what bart taught me, it's always worked.
It's something you really have to figure out for yourself. I've seen vintage texts say as few as 3-5 on each side. A member here said there's no change under SEM imaging after 12-20 on each side. And I've seen people claim they see improvement after 50-100 on each side.
You get a feel for it, or at least a habit after awhile. I would say I tend towards 16-32 linen/suede and 35-55 leather. Probably average 20 and 45
You get a feel for it, or at least a habit after awhile. I would say I tend towards 16-32 linen/suede and 35-55 leather. Probably average 20 and 45
I do about 30 on linen and 20 or so on leather.
Does any members who use dilucot method shave straight of leather successfuly? I have tryed it and linen stropping improved my coticule edge. I must try leather only again.
gary
gary
Im on the high side also. 80 linen and 80 to 100 leather. I havent tried off leather only in a long while as I always was told to use linen. I have a waxed flax linen vintage that works great. I have heard that flax linen has silicone in it so theres the abrasion. Perfect combination of it as you will not get a harsh edge from the linen.
I've dug out my old Tony Miller 4 sided latigo paddle strop recently and have been really enjoying it as an alternative to my hanging strops. So much so that aside from forgoing the leather I also skipped the linen hanging strop a few times. I think i got away with it after the jnat, with a lot of stropping, but the coticule edges ended up going to the chromium oxide mid shave. To be fair my coticule-fu is a little out of practice as I've been playing with my new jnat for the past few months.
Thanks for the responses to my question. Oh yeah, this is off a coticule, isn't it? I like the HHT as a determining factor. In the past, I was trying 60 laps linen followed by 60 laps leather off the coticule because "that's what an expert said to do." Seemed to work okay. More recently, I have switched to 10 laps linen/30 laps leather because another "honing guru" said to do this. In checking with the HHT afterwards, that seems to work fine too. Here, I believe the assumption was that a few laps with a paste would have been done as well, which may be doing some of the grunt work instead of dozens and dozens of regular stropping laps. So for the time being, off the coticule, I am inclined to try 10 laps linen then 30 laps leather and try an HHT. If it's where I want it, I go shave. If it is very close, maybe 10 more laps linen, then 30 laps leather to see if that's improved. If not, then it's back to the stone or move to a paste. Incremental stropping steps like these help me to have a better idea of the edge's state. Perhaps continuing further with 10/30 lap counts on linen/leather would win out in the end; but for now, I'm inclined to think less is telling me more off the stones.
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+1 I am about the same. Sometimes I will vary a few strokes more or less but average is probably 20/40-50
The less is more thing is a great approach if you want as much of the stones character in the shave as possible.
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I am more convinced than ever that I have a thing for strops. Reducing my lap counts never entered my mind because I enjoy stropping.
