Thread: Do you put paste on your strop?

I just got my first strop today and i was wondering if i should put paste on it. ive heard that you should keep your everyday strop without paste and another strop with paste on it. Is this right or should i do something diffrent

I wouldn't use any paste on your every day strop. Just give it a wipe down with your palm before you strop and it should last you a long time.

Thanks but if I got another strop and put paste on it when would I use that one?

Originally Posted by nunsbythebundle

Thanks but if I got another strop and put paste on it when would I use that one?

Pasted strops are for when you need to touch up your razor, much like a barber's hone.

You mean abrasive paste, right?

Leather on its own is traditionally for daily stropping. It is smooth and fine grained and non-abrasive and therefore perfect for realigning the edge fins, removing tiny bits of moisture etc from the edge and so on. In and of itself, leather will not remove metal. Leather conditioning paste can be used to keep the leather supple and in good condition. However, there is some argument over whether it is necessary - there is evidence to suggest that if you rub the strop up and down a few times with the palm of your hand prior to each stropping, the hand oils are all the conditioning you need.

Abrasive pastes are generally fine-grained metal removing media used for the occasional (eg monthly) touch-up of an edge, or at least that has been their traditional purpose. Paste needs to go somewhere - some people put it on another strop (paddle or hanging), some people use a piece of balsa, or felt, or whatever.

The abrasive particles are quite fine, so if you do use it on leather it is then subsequently almost impossible to remove all traces from it and it remains forever more (more or less ) an abrasive strop. So if you go that route, you will probably need a dedicated strop for the paste, and another for the every day stropping. If your hanging strop is two-sided, you could use one for the paste, the other for the leather.

James.

Originally Posted by nunsbythebundle

Thanks but if I got another strop and put paste on it when would I use that one?

You'll use an abrasive when your shave quality starts to degrade, (tugging, edge gets dull during use, etc.). The question you'll need to ask yourself is "is the reason my blade edge isn't where it was due to my stropping, my technique, the edge itself, or this particular phase of the moon?". A pasted strop can fix the blade edge, which means at this stage you'll need an abrasive sooner rather than later because you're probably going to botch the stropping and trash your edge. Once your stropping technique gets more refined, you'll need an abrasive less frequently.

Depending on your strop, you might be able to comfortably use the back side of it. If you've really got the burning need to play with pastes, I'd consider applying the paste there.