Thread: Stropping - lifting the razor off the strop at the end of a pass

Lifting the razor off the strop complicates the process, adding an unnecessary motion. If you can strop well when lifting the razor from the strop, you can do just as well without doing it and therefore avoid problematic mistakes.

It is one of those quirky things. To me it is more important that your stropping is effective and you are comfortable with the technique. I think there are more places for things to go sideways doing it that way,however if it feels natural and you can do it well, you are probably further ahead than trying to learn a technique to satisfy a textbook example. If it feels good and is effective do it.

You can lift the razor off the strop, sure. And it can be effective stropping too. But you'd better be on top of your stropping game to pull it off effectively time after time, shave after shave.

Smaller movements have more control. Keeping the spine on the strop as you flip is a smaller movement than lifting the whole razor off the strop at each end, trying to make the spine hit first coming back down and then lowering the edge to the surface after that. That's actually a complicated movement when you think about it, and eminently more susceptible to mistakes. And that's not even mentioning the risk of rolling the edge on lift off if you lift the spine first while the edge is still on the surface of the strop, which is the natural movement associated with such an action.

The choice is yours of course, but my suggestion is to avoid it until and when your skill level is at a level where the risk is minimal.

James.

I think this type of stropping goes back to watching barbers flail away at the leather. Like Jimbo says, they were definitely on top of their game.

I have never figured out why my barber (as a kid) always flicked some water on his strop before applying the razor. The strop was leather.

I agree with Jimbo . Keeping the spine on the strop felt a little awkward at first , for me too . But it was easy to learn , and well worth the effort .

So glad I read this. Being a newbie, today will be my 5th day, I thought that the razor should be lifted of the strop at the end of the stroke but that the most important thing was having the edge lifted off the strop first.

Just tried stropping with the spine never leaving the strop and it felt so much better. It was also a much faster transition although being new I'm still very slow in comparison to videos I've seen. Still not totally comfortable with stropping but hopefully getting better.

Thanks

Doing it this way is like stopping and starting every pass and will be more time consuming. It can be done but odds are you will damage the edge and nick up your strop especially as you are still learning. If you are flipping the razor in your fingers then it should be a easy change to keep the blade on the strop. Good luck

After ruining a leather strop. I started to go very slow. I would stop totally get into position and finished the turn. After doing that for a while I have picked up some speed. Good luck.

Originally Posted by ace

Lifting the razor off the strop complicates the process, adding an unnecessary motion. If you can strop well when lifting the razor from the strop, you can do just as well without doing it and therefore avoid problematic mistakes.

This . . . K.I.S.S. The fewer variables, the better. but, I am still less than ten shaves into my Straight razor journey, so what do I know?