Thread: Strop Question

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!

When I first started wet shaving I got a couple nicks in my strop(not real bad).I bought one of those nail files that have 4 faces on them.Starting with the rough face to gently file out the nick and using the final smooth nail buffer face to polish the leather.Then a little strop dressing (just a little) worked into the area and let the air do the rest. Usually worked out pretty good for minor nicks. Hope that helps ?

Shorten your stropping stroke to avoid the nicks at each end, and learn to start the flip-over before completing your stropping stroke. Just remember not to complete the flip-over before finishing that same stroke... You'll probably want to be travelling in the opposite direction by then, otherwise you're just adding more nicks and cuts. Your nicks are more than likely caused by a stop/start jerk at the end of your stropping motion before turning your razor. Not that this information is any good to you now that you've done it of course...


Mick