Strop pasting.

Hey I got this set a while ago and would like to know if any of you guys are familiar with it. My blade needs sharpening and as of yet has never been stropped on a pasted strop. So I'm basically wondering is this sufficient for sharpening my slightly dull razor? If so, do I apply the paste directly onto the strop or do I need to use oil with the paste. I hope I'm making sense to someone Thanks.

I would not paste that strop as it is you daily strop but instead use your stone that is a ch 12k I think. You will need to lap your stone before use to ensure it is flat and chamfer the edges as well. For this you will need some 320 wet and dry and a flat surface to lay it on, sheet of glass marble slab or worktop. A look in the srp wiki should show you better how to lap your stone and use it. but closer pictures would be helpful to ensure it is a chinese 12k and not something else which could be too course

Thanks for the quick response pedro I bought this strop last week to use as my primary strop so I could paste the other one. Would you still recommend honing instead of pasting the strop?

You could do both or one just one, I don't know that many different pastes but I do know some are better than others, so if you say what the paste is you will get some opinions on it as well, I refresh my edges on a barbers hone and some times on a crox pasted strop

I'm thinking that you need to focus on getting your razor professionally honed before you do anything else. A pasted strop is not going to make a razor that's in need of sharpening shave ready. The use of a strop (w/o paste) is a requirement before every shave to even out the edge. A pasted strop is useful once your SR already has a good edge on it.

Hey Danny

If your razor was already shave ready the Dovo Red and Black will work to restore it to a shave ready edge as long as you didn't roll the edge while stropping. How you would use the paste is as follow: First both the red and black are in a paste form already so you will not need to add oil to them. The black is the lower micron of the two being between 1 and 2 mircons and is the finishing paste. Since you have a strop just for these paste I would apply this to the smoother side and the red, 2-4 micronds, to the rough side. If your razor is just starting to tug and pull or just isn't giving the shave you want this would be the place to start. What I would do is do 10 laps on the black. Then clean the razor off completly so you have no transfer on to your good strop. Then do a normal stroping on your regular strop then test the blade. Shave test is the best to use. If that did not work I would do another 10 laps and test again. If it is still not good I would then go to the red side, doing 10 laps on the red and 20 laps on black and test again if this does not bring it back you can ethier try higher lap counts or go back to a hone.

Now with all this said if you are new to straight razors and just started shaving with a shave ready razor recently and are having trouble it problay isn't a razor sharpeness problem but a Technique problem and I would first try to correct that before doing anything to the razor.