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Thread: Stropping Draw

  1. #11
    Senior Member kevint's Avatar
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    how does draw change as you near completion then?

    you are compressing the nap which provides more friction?

    I never noticed

    (I guess I assumed latigo was left in its top grain smooth condition. T or F)

  2. #12
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    Draw doesn't change as you near completion, at least not strictly speaking. It changes as you do more and more laps on the strop, which compresses the leather a bit, flattens out the minor bumps and humps in the strop, works some of the oils to the surface, etc. That this increase in draw tends to happen about the time the razor gets fully stropped is mostly a coincidence. There is probably some relationship since presumably the razor is also making better contact with the newly-flattened-and-compressed leather in those last laps, but it's still a pretty indirect relationship. You can take a dull blade and strop it and the draw will increase the same as it does for a sharp blade. IME the relationship between draw and sharpness is a pretty good example of the admonition about the difference between correlation and causation.

    BTW if you strop on newspaper you get the same increase in draw after a number of laps. But there it's a sign that the paper has given up the ghost and is no longer polishing the edge, and it's time to replace the paper.
    Last edited by mparker762; 05-23-2009 at 06:29 AM.

  3. #13
    Senior Member kevint's Avatar
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    Thanks for the explain MParker762

    i suppose my strop is too small and unoiled, or the effect too subtle.

    Hey here's a way to increase draw: tape the spine

    cheers

  4. #14
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    Some types of leather have very little draw - horsehide in general, and cordovan (shell) in particular - and don't tend to develop much more as stropping progresses.

  5. #15
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    I know some people will say I'm doing something wrong, but ... sometimes when I'm near the end of stropping, and using a really light touch, the draw suddenly disappears, the razor just slides over the strop smoothly.
    (On a latigo strop.)

    And, no, I don't think I'm breaking off a burr or anything like that.

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