Quote Originally Posted by niftyshaving View Post
An interesting experiment to get the feel of stropping uses a roll of newspaper.
Make a roll from a SINGLE sheet of newspaper.
Too much pressure stroping and the roll will collapse.
The roll is narrow so start at the heel end of the razor and stroke so the contact point with the roll
ends up at the toe at the end. Lift the edge but not the spine from the roll. Edge up and over then after
sliding the spine to place the heel in position bring the edge down. Stroke in the opposite direction.
This is an X stroke, a bit extreme but still an X stroke.
If you get the timing wrong you slice a bit of yesterday's paper and not a new strop.

Nice and slow (deliberate). The spine stays in contact.

The flip is done with the thumb and first finger more than the arm or wrist.
Watch the videos for this bit.

You can even practice with a butter knife at first.
Quote Originally Posted by ejmolitor37 View Post
One other tip I like to share, place the spine on your strop and perform your stroke carefully.
Now lay the blade on as you would normally and notice the sound difference? Not all razors will be that noticeable but I have found most of mine make a different sound letting you know you are in contact.
Will do both things.
One thing I forgot to mention is that the spine is warped (I think that is the right word) it has a curve (like a smile) on the spine that makes one side bevel to be deeper than the other, the edge tho looks straight. I won't try to correct it... I think I read somewhere that chances are to damage the blade beyond hope. Besides if the WTG have been good, I think it's safe to assume it's just a matter of being good at honing and stropping.

One thing I do have to do is lap the 12K stone again... we moved to another apartment and my wife thought the stone was just a stone so she packed it with other things and now it's scratched and dented... -__-
I have a 1.5K norton wet sandpaper and I can get a 2000k (from another brand) to help. Interesting enough, the 1.5K Norton feels smoother than the 2K from the other brand. (An if you're curious, I can buy .5, .6 and .8 grit sandpaper. The 1.5k and 2k are used for automotive works (scratch removing and the like))