Thread: 2 goals

Originally Posted by Chris L

I don't know, Kevin, I'll never see a time where I'll dispense with stropping. Certainly honing is critical to creating a shave ready edge. But that aside, for me stropping is almost more important that honing for me. That leather just tunes the edges so well and so completely I don't know what else to say.

Chris L

I'm with you though on the beard prep. I'll come right out and say I hate prep. Shaving would be even more enjoyable for me if I could strop, splash one splash of water on my face, whip up some lather, apply and go right into shaving immediately. I would love that. Beard softening is a huge annoyance for me. Part of the problem for me I believe is my ultra hard water. I can hot towel until the cows come home, take a 20 minute shower blasting water directly on my beard and those extremely softened whiskers dry out and harden back up before I can get the lather on them. Prep oil doesn't really seem to help all that much either so I stopped using oil. So, yeah, I hate prep.

I am prepared for the crushing defeat of failure. I should measure width now or i'll never know what was lost in 6 months.

I still give you props for your strop making thread. The sanding part I would have never figured out. good stuff.

oil, like using the feather stuff: still a question mark. maybe it helps. but it doesn't work alone.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Giving a little bit of thought to the premise of eliminating prep or stropping I was thinking of how much I enjoy the lathering and the stropping. I don't know if I will eventually get tired of one or both but right now I look upon them as pleasurable. Even if I could get by with one pass I would still do two rather then miss out on pulling that warm lather out of the Moss scuttle and pampering myself with the Simpson's Super.

Early on in reading posts on the forums one long time member mentioned "the drudgery of honing". I am not there yet. I am still learning and full of curiosity. For me honing is still a pleasurable pursuit with a bit of mystery. I think as long as the mystery remains the honing will still be pleasurable. Stropping to me is equivalent to honing, at least in that it is something I like doing.

When I first started I had never used anything but Witch Hazel as an after shave and that only after I began DE shaving. Now I have a half dozen that I look forward to following the shave. Speaking for myself adding to the ritual has enhanced it. I can see where someone would want to take some of it away to save time or money but I enjoy it too much for that approach.

Good stuff Jimmy, but this is just another arrow. I have two razors selected that I feel have the crystals to be the best a steel can be.

Originally Posted by kevint

Good stuff Jimmy, but this is just another arrow. I have two razors selected that I feel have the crystals to be the best a steel can be.

Yeah Kevin, I'm not knocking that you're trying something different. I think it is great that people experiment. We would never make progress if people didn't.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Giving a little bit of thought to the premise of eliminating prep or stropping I was thinking of how much I enjoy the lathering and the stropping. I don't know if I will eventually get tired of one or both but right now I look upon them as pleasurable. Even if I could get by with one pass I would still do two rather then miss out on pulling that warm lather out of the Moss scuttle and pampering myself with the Simpson's Super.

Early on in reading posts on the forums one long time member mentioned "the drudgery of honing". I am not there yet. I am still learning and full of curiosity. For me honing is still a pleasurable pursuit with a bit of mystery. I think as long as the mystery remains the honing will still be pleasurable. Stropping to me is equivalent to honing, at least in that it is something I like doing.

When I first started I had never used anything but Witch Hazel as an after shave and that only after I began DE shaving. Now I have a half dozen that I look forward to following the shave. Speaking for myself adding to the ritual has enhanced it. I can see where someone would want to take some of it away to save time or money but I enjoy it too much for that approach .

The important parts of that post are in bold. Good stuff... I feel exactly the same way.

Originally Posted by kevint

oil, like using the feather stuff: still a question mark. maybe it helps. but it doesn't work alone.

When I used a cartridge razor, I got great results using (King of Shaves) shaving oil topped with aloe vera gel. Holland and Barrett - Product details for Aloe Vera Gel This was vastly better than anything else I had ever tried. I keep meaning to try it with a straight, but haven't got round to it.

I'm 90% certain it would give a great shave and cut down the time needed drastically. But using a brush and lather is half the fun.

And it has to be said that good prep and lather has an enormous softening effect on the skin. Sometimes during the prep I feel my face and I can feel that BBS effect happening even before the blade has got near my face!

Originally Posted by kevint

For sometime now I have been shaving right off the hone without an initial stropping. When I figure there is no use honing the blade further I put it in rotation (which for me means I don't use it much but start with another razor)

2 or 5 strokes per day is not going to wear a blade or hone too awful much is it?
whatta ya think?

I don't have a problem with it at all. I've been convinced for some time that stropping is honing, even using just unpasted leather and linen.

We had one member about three years ago that took a razor and a barber hone sans strop on a multi-month trip and simply gave his razor a few licks every day before each shave. When he came back he reported that it did just fine. I suspect that this does wear the blade much faster than stropping alone, but razors last so long already. It may mean your razor wears out after only 20 yrs of daily use which is not something I'd lose sleep over. It couldn't hurt to experiment a bit and see how few laps a day you can get away with.

Do you have the setup already planned out? You mentioned a coticle earlier, is that the hone are you going to use as a finisher? I've heard of natural hones getting up into the 40k range. Isn't that in the same ballpark as a strop's grit? Would you consider a pasted strop as a finsher? I look forward to hearing about how this turns out.

Originally Posted by mparker762

I don't have a problem with it at all. I've been convinced for some time that stropping is honing, even using just unpasted leather and linen.

We had one member about three years ago that took a razor and a barber hone sans strop on a multi-month trip and simply gave his razor a few licks every day before each shave. When he came back he reported that it did just fine. I suspect that this does wear the blade much faster than stropping alone, but razors last so long already. It may mean your razor wears out after only 20 yrs of daily use which is not something I'd lose sleep over. It couldn't hurt to experiment a bit and see how few laps a day you can get away with.

Both times I shaved this weekend, Mr. P, I reached for a stropped up razor to finish.

I found a couple spots on the edges with tiny chips. Since I wasn't sure if they were shave related or left behind from the original edge I dropped back and rehoned them/ I hope it's just that i didn't quite reach the sharpness i had earlier rather than the minimal prep.

Originally Posted by crazycliff200843

Do you have the setup already planned out? You mentioned a coticle earlier, is that the hone are you going to use as a finisher? I've heard of natural hones getting up into the 40k range. Isn't that in the same ballpark as a strop's grit? Would you consider a pasted strop as a finsher? I look forward to hearing about how this turns out.

Hi Cliff. for now I am concentrating on the coticule. I have a small nakayama asagi too. The thought to progress the edge another hone has already occurred to me

I doubt my asagi is in the 40k range, acts like too much of a cutter. Both act quite similar in regard to limited slurry production. If I go from cot to 20 laps on the asagi I often wonder if 20 more laps on the cot would not do the same thing. Typically i end up with too many variables, to give a definite answer but I still feel the asagi is the finer hone, and sharper edge.

Originally Posted by crazycliff200843

Do you have the setup already planned out? You mentioned a coticle earlier, is that the hone are you going to use as a finisher? I've heard of natural hones getting up into the 40k range. Isn't that in the same ballpark as a strop's grit? Would you consider a pasted strop as a finsher? I look forward to hearing about how this turns out.

For the record: I disagree with Mparker762 that a strop has any significant abrasive qualities.
Professor Verhoeven of the Iowa State University (he again) ran a series of empirical tests on the abrasive qualities of a clean leather strop. I quote (p.24 of the famous paper): "Stropping of the waterstone sharpened blades on clean leather strops had little effect upon the geometry of the as-sharpened blades. The abrasive grooves on faces and the bur size along the edge were not significantly modified. The burs on 600 grit pre-sharpened blades were not effectively removed. Apparently, the natural abrasives in clean leather,on either the hard or soft side of the leather, is not adequate to produce a significant abrasion of the surface."
At the same time, Vehoeven found that a CrO or diamond compound-loaded strop "produced excellent results". If CrO is rated 30000 grit, and clean leather supposed to be 40000 grit, then how comes that the former is effective in removing burs and scratches and the latter does none of the kind?

Stropping on clean leather is a buffing action par excellence. By its technological definition, buffing relies on plastic flow much more than on abrassion. It lends its effectiveness form the ductile properties of steel. It (re)alligns and within limits also (re)shapes the very thinest part of the edge (this would be easier if we could agree on the term "fin"). In its bare essence, stropping is completely different from honing.
Shaving is possible with an unstropped edge. Maybe a Shapton 30K even beats to purpose of stropping to some extent, because it creates such a thin edge honingly, but that takes certainly more skill than stropping, and it does remove steel while stropping does not.

Kevin, I'm still puzzled by you desire to beat the strop. Don't you like stropping? Or am I somehow missing the whole point? Maybe you need to learn how to strop on your hand palm, Maestro Livi style? It sure has a minimalist quality to it. And it looks cool too.

Best regards,
Bart.