I've been reading a lot on honing on all of the razor forums and keep seeing references to taping the spine. It seems that people are either looking to preserve appearance (say on a new damascus razor or vintage decorated spine), or trying to reduce spine wear, and/or trying to reduce the amount of honing required to bring up a shave ready edge on troublesome razors like near wedges.

The thing that bothers me about taping is that it would seem that if you tape the spine (during honing) then the angle will change (become more obtuse) at the edge.

Then you go to the strop with no tape on the spine which then makes the angle more acute because the spine is now lying lower than it was when it was covered in tape which I would then assume brings the edge up off of the leather.

So in my way of thinking if you were to pull the strop tight and use little to no pressure then your newly honed (taped spine) edge won't even be getting stropped since the leather won't be touching it.

Am I misunderstanding what is happening here?

And then what about correcting uneven wear on a used razor? If the spine is taped then only the edge will be honed back into form while the spine will be left messed up which then brings me back to what happens when you strop since the edge and spine don't match?

Aren't the edge and spine supposed to wear together? I always thought of the razor's spine thickness as being directly proportional to the width of the blade.

Anyone want to help clear this up for me?

Thanks,
Dave