Thread: Premature dullness: strop technique suspected. Angle? Pressure? Fix?

Just a month after getting my full hollow Birsmarck Registered well honed, I find it's suddenly seeming dull in the last few shaves --- shaves ~15 and 16 on this hone. I'm still just six weeks into SR shaving. I typically strop 20 passes before and after shaving, on a well oiled Whipped Dog poor man's strop, using an X pattern.

So, my initial diagnosis: mis-stropping.

Since I lack good anchors from which to suspend my strop, and I do have a valence style sink with a long, flat counter, I lay the strop flat on the counter edge, and strop the razor in a right-left motion.

I've been very lucky/good at avoiding flipping the blade edge down and nicking my learners strop. But, I often notice when I strop, unless I've just rubbed in a couple drops of oil on the strop, the surface feels a bit viscous and tacky -- so I tend to oil it almost every time.

Theory 1: the blade's not square with the strop. Now that I've got a good blade flip going, I like to speed up, but when I speed up, I find that I'm slightly tilting the scales and tang into the direction of the strop, so that the blade is about 15-20° off square. Is this dulling my blade?

Theory 2: too much pressure. To deal with the aforementioned strop tackyness, and just because I'm still not fully familiar, in order to keep the spine and edge of the blade in contact with the strop I find myself using a bit of pressure.

Anyway, I started finding the blade riding up over the whiskers using technique that a few shaves ago would have given me a good, close WTG pass, and ATG pass requires more pressure and multiple passes to get a less close shave. So, I'm experiencing rapid blade dulling.

What I tried last night is a balsa wood and grit touch up. The balsa is the one which comes with the Whipped Dog kit. 20 blade strops green then 20 more red, then 40 strop passes (slow and careful and square) on the strop. This helped. But it's still feeling like it could use more.

So, what about my diagnosis?

And, what's the best way to regain as much of an edge as I can given my tools?

FYI, I have two other blades which are in better shape to shave with, but am noticing some premature dulling there too. The Torry half hollow and the J Wostenholm wedge both seem to be maintaining their edge better - I presume because they're thicker steel blades.

Thanks!

SingingSteel

If you're really bent on hanging that strop up, you can loop the arrow shaped end around a doorknob and the thread it through the hole in the strop.

Originally Posted by Xaved

If you're really bent on hanging that strop up, you can loop the arrow shaped end around a doorknob and the thread it through the hole in the strop.

Was about to suggest the doorknob myself, I only palm rub my strop to maintain condition

Though not completely necessary, personally, I would hang the strop. While you don't have to, my experience has been easier to use a hanging strop while hanging than on a table/countertop, as the strop tends to move on me while on a flat surface. My future hook to do so was purchased at Home Depot for about $3, and I'll be anchoring it to a stud in the wall. Currently, I'm in the midst of a bathroom remodel to our Master Bath, so I'm stuck using our tiny hall bath. In the mean time, I'm using a bit of paracord (again, picked up at HD for about $3) to anchor my strop to the door knob. I tied a loop of paracord through the ring of my strop, then I fold the loop in half and bring both sides around to form a second loop to slip over the door knob. Trust me when I say that short of the knob coming off the door, it's not going anywhere.

As for the pressure issue, you want to pull/push the blade up and down the strop, not push the blade into the strop i.e. no downward pressure. Let the blade glide across the strop using it's own weight to keep it against the strop. It may take more push/pull pressure if your strop has a lot of draw, but better that than downward pressure to force the blade to move.

I don't have any experience with using strop pastes, but a lot of members say that, depending on which you're using, the edge will be sharp but not smooth. That said, it's possible that after using your pasted balsa strop you may have sharpened it up, but it's not smooth. Being new, this may be hard to tell the difference.

I know you asked about your current gear, but one thing to consider is getting a barber hone for touching up the blade between honings. That and your pasted strop should keep you going for a long time. The barber hone is easy to use and there's little risk of damaging the blade or edge if you brush up on the subject. In fact, gssixgun has a fantastic video on YouTube about using one. If you follow his advice, you should be just fine.

One final piece of advice- since you're in NJ, I know there are lots of members in your neck of the woods. I might see if any of them would be willing to meet up with you and watch your technique to help correct any mistakes you might be making. That or go to a local group meet. You'll gain much more wisdom and experience in person than over the net.

Overall, I would suggest concentrating on your pressure during stropping, as that is the main suspect in my opinion.

Keep at it, and eliminate one variable at a time, and you'll get there.

Thanks, Xaved, EdHewitt, Crouton, SirStropalot.

Consensus seems to be from response here and elsewhere: hang the strop, use lighter pressure, and, since it helped a bit, try a few more rounds on the pasted balsa (20 passes on chromium oxide, followed by 20 passes on iron oxide grits, then 40 on the strop, all from The Whipped Dog, from whom I bought the SR start-up kit, including strop, neat foot oil, balsa pre-pasted and with extra grits.

I agree with SirStropalot, my strop is probably oiled enough. To make sure I'm not suffering from oil slick, I'll warm it up with a hairdryer a bit, give it a good hand massage to work oil in our out, and then rub it down with a cotton rag just to make sure I've reduced surface oil. I imagine I'll invest in a better strop after a few more months, around the time I can no longer remember the last time I accidentally nicked or sliced my strop, and really feel I've mastered it enough to justify deeper investment. I don't want to hack up an expensive strop; I'm very cost-sensitive.

I also suspect eventually I'll progress to exploring honing with some of those hi-tech honing films (papers, sheafs, or whatever they're called), which seem to be getting a lot of late-breaking love and attention here and elsewhere, and seem like a very low cost-to-entry honing option over stones. For me hanging the strop off the door handle or hinge via Crouton976's loop seems the best solution at the moment, before I go installing hardware.

And, I've made contact with the guys who just organized the NNJ meetup a couple of weeks ago, and hope to learn from them first hand sometime this summer.

Great video -- thanks. From it I see that angle of my blade edge to the strop and direction of strop is not my problem -- looks pretty much like Lynn's. I've just gotta hang my strop and try it that way -- the hand motion looks much more comfortable and natural than the strop lying flat on a horizontal surface.

Not at all frustrating. Just the world showing me what I need to learn next! And, thankfully, I've got a place, here, with a supportive and knowledgeable community eager to help! If more of life were like this, we'd all be further along.
THANKS

Here's a couple of pics demonstrating what I mean about tying the loop...

Originally Posted by SingingSteel

Theory 2: too much pressure. To deal with the aforementioned strop tackyness, and just because I'm still not fully familiar, in order to keep the spine and edge of the blade in contact with the strop I find myself using a bit of pressure.

Too much pressure is bad when using a strop. It is much worse if abrasives are involved. Coupled together your razor's edge would be all kinds of wrong.
Correct honing would fix that. Incorrect stropping will take you right back there in a short time.

Also, if you bought a strop that needed that much oiling are you sure it's not a piece of rawhide ?

Thanks for all this feedback.

Well, I'm not yet possessed of hones nor honing skills, and the grits came with the Whipped Dog SR starter kit: the strop, neet foot oil, chrome oxide, iron oxide, balsa wood grit strop. The instructions did suggest that the grits shouldn't be necessary until after a few months -- I am aware that the dullness seems due to my own newbie technique errors. Nonetheless, I was extremely careful with the grits not to use any pressure.

Suspending the strop seems to have solved many problems. The problem was not the strop, it was the fact that I hadn't suspended it, and the horizontal surface was causing me to compensate with too much pressure, which was also the source of perceived sluggish strop draw. While I may have used more oil than necessary, it doesn't seem so much as to have saturated the leather. All stropping issues seem solved by suspending the strop.

Post grits, the edge feels and performs like it did when it first got honed, at least for today's shave. Thanks for the HHT reminder -- I'd forgotten, and that would have been wiser after five or ten passes at a time. Let's see if this edge endures. I presume wire edges quickly disintegrate into ragged nightmares...? How can you tell if you've got a wire edge without a microscope? What does become of wire edges? If I have in fact created an unstable wire edge, then I guess I'll have learned my lesson the hard way, and will have to get this blade rehoned.

Ryan82: what shaving technique can prematurely dull a blade?

Originally Posted by SingingSteel

Ryan82: what shaving technique can prematurely dull a blade?

Not answering for Ryan but overly high angle will do it. It's akin to dragging a knife edge over a chopping board.

Originally Posted by onimaru55

Not answering for Ryan but overly high angle will do it. It's akin to dragging a knife edge over a chopping board.

Ahaa. Not something I've done, though, so that one's off the list of potential causes.