Thread: Paddle strop questions, or what the heck did I do?

I tried using my paddle strop to put a better edge on my razor. I think I have made a huge mistake. The grit isn't very "even" on the strop, so you can feel different patches of roughness vs smoothness.

Anyway, I used it on the .5, then just the leather, and when I hold up the blade and look perpendicular, (spine on bottom, edge on top, looking with the blade in front of me left to right, it's not smooth anymore. ridges, valleys, ups, downs, it looks terrible. If I drag it across my thumbnail on the back, it catches and skips and jumps, instead of nice and smooth and digging in like it used to.

So I thought I'd start on the 2 micron side, and work my way down to the .5. The problems' getting worse not better. Now if I run my fingernail from the spine to the edge, I can feel something "catch" right at the edge, like it's "rolled" over, or somesuch.

What am I doing wrong? I think I killed it.

WHen I strop with the paddle, should yellow goop be coming off pretty constantly? Or is it supposed to be rubbed into the surface, and it's just "loose" stuff coming off?

Help! Thanks.

Hello

Was your razor ok before you stropped it? Did it have a good hedge?

What kind of razor?

Phil

You will rub off paste on the first few uses and there will be some grabbing as the surface evens out. Basically the leather sucks much of the moisture out of the pastes making the first application a little splotchy. Later applications down the road take far less paste and is simply glides on onece the paddle is glazed over a bit.

I think Lynn once mentioned wetting hif fingers and smearing the pastes around a bit to redistribute them but I have had less than good sucess with that.

It souds like you have a rolled edge but I can't see how it would roll backwards right after the paddle as the stropping motion, spine to edge would leave it straight. Now, if stropped to a wire edge the first shave would roll it back so your nail caught on it.

Puzzled too.

Tony

The spine usually scrapes off the excess the first few times you use it, so that's not unusual.

What's strange is the paddle leaving your edge crooked - abrasive paddles just aren't *that* abrasive. I'd expect that even with a 3 micron abrasive it would take several thousand passes to remove enough material to see a difference. So this is definitely a mystery.

Had it been shaving well before you did this? Was this the first thing you did after honing it? It's possible that it had an overhoned edge and what you're seeing and feeling are the remnants of the wire after the paddle started taking it off.

It was shaving well, but slowly getting worse. It's a dovo razor, been using it about 2 months, pretty much daily.

The jaggies are on the end-half away from the hinge, the part up to the hinge looks great, feels sharp.

I spent a half-hour last night on the .5 side, just working on that one section,
and nothing I did seemed to make a difference. Either in causing the rolled edge on the back half by the hinge, or in getting rid of the "catch" on the front.

WHat else I noticed is weirds is that on the stroke moving away from me (spine first), it feels much different than when I roll it and pull it towards me. The away stroke really feels like it's dragging in the grit, you can hear it. Pulling it towards me, it almost just glides, doesn't feel like it's really dragging at all.

I wonder if the blade is bent or curved?

So I'm stumped. I'm thinking I might have to send it off to get re-honed. I wonder
if I can use one of my regular knife stones to clean up the edge.

Sounds like the edge is curled??? I got that once when I dropped a razor and thought it was ok, but the edge had hit something on the way down and was curled. I fixed it by stropping the blade on the corner of the countertop (this is a good way to break a razor BTW so I don't recommend it), and that got things straightened out enough that I could fix the rest on the hone pretty easily.

It sounds curled or rolled for sure now. I think you need to try some type of hone to remove the rolled/wire edge. The 0.5 micron side is so fine you could hone for a week straight and not wear the curl away.

I find 10-15 passes on the 0.5 to usually be more than enough for normal refreshing of an edge.

Tony

Well, I don't have a special custom razor hone, but I got this silicon carbide knife sharpening thing that works good on my knives.

So I gave it a shot. It's pretty small, so the passes are very short, only about
2 inches stroke, so it took a while. But that seems to have cleaned it up. At least now when I hold it up all the jaggies are gone.

After that I took it through the 1 and .5, and *now* when I run it on the flat leather side of the paddle, it works very smoothly

I did drop my razor once, and I have this super hard flooring in the bathroom,
it might've hit it and chipped or nicked it a bit, and then it just slowly got worse.

I had forgotten all about it, because I picked it up and went back to shaving, but that would explain it.

I'll check back in a few days of shaving, see how it's going. THanks for all the advice and help.

I did something similar myself. I must have tapped the edge of a razor against the faucet when finishing up one day and didn't realize it. Next morning I went to strop and made a huge scratch right down one of my favorite strops, top to bottom. really bugged me and then once l looked at the razors I saw the burr.

It all ended well though as I have a "connection" with the strop maker and he made me up a new one that night <g>

Tony