Questions about Strops and Hones

I read some people have strops just for different grit pastes.

Somehow touching up the edge of a straight razor with pasted strops makes more sense to me than using a hone.

First question. If I used pasted strops for the fine honing, do I still need to own a fine hone? or just a coarser hone? or a hone at all?

Second question. What's the general consensous of what is better practice: pasted strops, or hones.

strops and hones. strops and hones.


For your information, I have a few strops being sent to me right now and an old straight razor looks to be on the way as well.




I'm considering getting a few more strops and using pastes instead of a bunch of hones, but I really don't know what I need.


Another question, how many strops do I need for pasting? 2?


Thanks for reading.

Well, barbers back in the day used these little pocket-sized hones for touch-up, most of them were a little bigger than an ipod or palm pilot. Pasted strops (both hanging and paddle) were around back then, but many more hones than pasted strops seem to have made it to ebay, though I don't know what this says about their relative popularity back then.

You can use pasted strops for touch-up just fine, but I've never heard of anybody successfully using only pasted strops, at some point you wind up having to go back to a hone to generate a clean bevel. That's not to say that some member hasn't successfully used pasted strops like this, I just haven't heard about it. I think the paddle-only guys just send their razors in to a honemeister once or twice a year for honing, and use pasted strops in between for refreshes. At least one member (Joe Lerch) has kept razors going for extended periods (over a year I believe) with just a barber hone.

I've used pasted paddles, pasted hanging strops, and barber hones, and lately I've found myself gravitating to barber hones for touchup. They both work quite well, though, and I'm not sure if my preferences are rational or emotional. Barber hones are small enough to store in the medicine cabinet between the aspirin and sudafed, which is some small advantage I guess.

(Pasted hanging strops work wonders on knives. The strop itself will create the secondary bevel such as it is. I just sharpened up a puma stockman on my flexcut gold pasted strop and could probably shave with any of the blades :->)

I've been getting away without using pasted strops. However they do make your life easier and you can use them to get some amazing edges. The best bet for a rookie is to get a 4-sided one, paste 3 sides (usually 3, 1, .5 or 1, .5, .25 microns) and you're set. However you'd still need a medium hone and a fine hone or a single hone that's a combination of the 2. Rich has also been maintaining his blades for LONG periods of time without sending them out for honing. However I couldn't live without my hones, which I use to restore oldies and in case there is any accidental edge damage.

Also keep in mind that your "hone" may be nothing more than a piece of plate glass and a set of handamerican's PSA papers. It doesn't have to be a stone.