Draw???

Hello everyone :)

I did some searching on the concept of draw, and I still don't quite understand fully what it means.

My best estimation is that a high/heavy draw is one that has a prominent feeling of a vacuum or pulling into the leather during stropping, and a light draw is the opposite (smoother, less suction?)

I ask because I purchased my first 3" hanging strop yesterday and it feels different from the small paddle strop and newspaper I had been using (see photo below). The strop is a two-sided Seattle Notion Co 1558.

I guess without another strop of a different quality, I wouldn't be able to tell if this is high or low draw. However, could someone set me straight or confirm what I think I've understood about draw? Many thanks in advance :)

I think of draw as almost like the "resistance" or the "grab" of the razor when stropping it. It is hard to tell what draw is unless you have owned a few strops with differents draws. I prefer a medium draw strop like the SRD 3 " Natural, love it. To each his own though.

That's exactly how it feels, yes. "Grab" seems like a better word, indeed. I honestly don't know how I went this long without a strop like this. I was getting good shaves for a while (the paddle strop and paper do their jobs well), but this strop made yesterdays shave smooth as silk.

It's all about friction. That's what draw is. High draw is a lot of friction and low draw is little or none.A strop with little draw will allow your razor to just glide effortlessly over the strop while the opposite causes you to add a bit of oomph to the stropping motion.

Don't confuse draw with performance. All strops of quality do the same exact thing.

Something I was learning at the Chicagoland meet-up is how much "draw" is purely a matter of preference. As a beginner, I had thought that "draw" was necessary for good stropping. But I tried 7-8 different strops at the meet-up, all of them excellent, and some had no "draw" or "grab" at all.

Excellent, and thank you for the advice thebigspendur! In the back of my mind, I suppose I was a bit curious if different draws had any different effects on edges. It is reassuring to know that they all perform the same function :)

I have a leather / poly strop from whipped dog. It has some "sticky" spots in it. Wondering is this normal for leather? is it part of the breaking in? how do you tell what type of draw a leather strop is going to have? the poly strop has what I would say is next to zero draw, which at this point i prefer, but there are some spots on the leather strop which have light draw, but the spots of heavy or "sticky" draw really throw me off. I know hitting it with neatsfoot isn't the right move, but is there way to encourage the break in or conditioning of the strop or does it just take time?
thanks gents!

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Originally Posted by noobs

I have a leather / poly strop from whipped dog. It has some "sticky" spots in it. Wondering is this normal for leather? is it part of the breaking in? how do you tell what type of draw a leather strop is going to have? the poly strop has what I would say is next to zero draw, which at this point i prefer, but there are some spots on the leather strop which have light draw, but the spots of heavy or "sticky" draw really throw me off. I know hitting it with neatsfoot isn't the right move, but is there way to encourage the break in or conditioning of the strop or does it just take time?
thanks gents!

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Have you been doing a lot of Hand-Rubbing to help break the leather in? If not, that would be what I'd do to help the break-in process down the road. Just wipe your nose, forehead or any 'oilier' part of your facial area with your palm and lightly rub that in a few strokes then gradually add a bit of downward pressure and increase your speed continuing with that rubbing until the leather feels warm to the touch. I would try to do that before stropping each time and it may help those spots you are talking about. Are you confident enough with your stropping technique that it is unlikely to be a variance in your technique/pressure? If not, that may be a likely answer as well.

All my strops, aside from one Vintage, came from SRD and they do a great job at describing the Draw for each one. If you can contact Whipped Dog they may be able to tell you what type of leather was used and then you could search that more specifically... ie, English Bridle, Latigo, Horse, Kangaroo, Buffalo, etc.

Hope that helps point you down one possible path... I have the Horse from SRD and initially I thought it had Sticky Spots as well but it turned out that it just has such light (... as in CRAZY SLICK a'la Chevy Chase's Dish Ride on Christmas Vacation!) that I was starting with too much pressure, getting taken away by the lack of draw, adding more pressure and thus creating the effect of Sticky Spots... But, that is an extreme example that I've not seen with other leather types that I own.

Shawn
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I hate new strops with a passion, they take a long time to break in.If you have sticky spots in a strop, that strop has some issues.
all strops do the same thing,Draw means nothing JMO