So, I have been going at this for about two months and am very pleased with my progress. Still trying to figure out how to get my neck smooth since my grain grows diagonally, so every pass is kind of XTG. I've started some of the advanced strokes and that's helping some. My question, though, is about my strop...

From fine tuning my technique, I have developed several small nicks on my leather strop. They are mostly at the ends, but there may be one or two in the middle. Here's my question... at what point do I need to replace this strop with a smooth, non-nicked one. There doesn't seem to be a sharpening problem with my Dovo, but I also don't want to develop one from using a bad strop.

Thanks for all the feedback here!