Thread: My Stropping Tipss

These tips are just my experience and opinion. Maybe someone else can benefit from them.

Since learning to hone, I have honed about 60 razors, and I set aside about 8 of them because the weren't *quite* what I wanted, a little irritation when shaving against the grain on my neck.

Well, two weeks ago I scored a very nice old Red Imp strop that someone's great grandfather and lovingly broken in for me :-)

Anyway, I did 150 fast, reasonably hard strokes on those razors, and 7 of them ended up becoming the absolute finest razors I have ever shaved with.

Tips:

1. Always, always, always warm up your strop first by running your palm up and down it fast. Leather loves to be rubbed and handled.
2. I roll a glass bottle up and down the strop a few times before stropping the razor. It flattens out the surface and gives it a nice draw.

Several things:

1. A hollow ground razor will make more noise when stropping than a wedge.

2. The leather has grain, so usually the razor makes more noise coming back toward you than going away.

3. The "Draw" noise is not loud, it is quieter than the *bad* noises.

4. You "feel" the draw, rather than hear it. If you hold the spine against the strop and then lower the edge onto it while moving, a properly honed razor will create uniform resistance. Takes practice to feel it.

5. A loud reedy sound means only the spine is in contact with the strop. Check your technique.

6. A loud singing sound means you have lifted the spine. The edge could be damaged. If it was only part of one stroke, then go ahead and finish stropping and try the razor. I have done this and had no damage. Otherwise the razor will need honing again.

I've found that a freshly honed razor, stropped a hundred or so times before each shave will improve every time it is stropped for about 3 shaves. After that, 50 strop strokes every shave will keep it shaving for months.

Then the razor will start to go downhill. A good W&B will just start to miss whiskers, and going back over the area gets fewer and fewer of them, until it is a pain. Time to hone.


Hope this helps someone.