I thought it might help to hear from a fellow newbie. The following is the deal on hones/strops/pasted strops as I currently understand it. Keep in mind, this is all from a newbie perspective. If I get any of this majorly wrong I'm sure someone with more experience will jump in and offer more accurate information.

As for Tony's strops, I think it would be safe to say that ANY strop from Tony would make an excellent starter strop. I've just started out with his "#4 starter strop." It depends on how much you want to spend. You could start out with a fairly plain, inexpensive strop that gets the job done like I did or get one of the fancier models if you prefer.

Now, repeat after me - pasted strops are not for daily use. Go ahead, say it. No, really, say it out loud. Say it again. Write it on the bathroom mirror in your wife or girlfriend's lipstick and read it every time you look in the mirror. Then, go out and buy her some flowers and a new tube of lipstick so you don't get into too much trouble.

Unpasted strops are for daily stropping before shaving. That can be a hanging strop, paddle strop, loom strop, etc. Whatever variety of leather strop you can find can be used WITHOUT paste for daily stropping.

Like hones pasted strops remove metal. Coarser pastes remove more metal than finer pastes. It might be a very minute amount of metal, but they do remove some metal. I know some folks can rattle off numbers off the top of their head. I have no pasted strops or hones in my collection yet, so I'm not quite up to that point. A paddle strop is a common strop to use with pastes but pastes can be used on a hanging strop also. But, once you've put paste on a strop it can't be used for regular daily stropping ever again. So, if you want to use a strop with strop paste it needs to be dedicated for that purpose. Some folks use pasted strops for final polishing after honing. And I think some use them to give a razor a lite touch up if the razor is starting to develop a hint of drag.

As for hones - you will either need to invest in a hone, or hones, at some point or be prepared to send your razor out to a honemeister when it needs honing. The Norton 4000/8000 combo seems to the the most commonly recommended hone to start with.


Kevin