Thread: Hone or strop paste?

Well, it never hurts to have a spare or twelve, but a pasted strop can extend the shaveability of an edge for quite some time. The obvious downside of sending a razor out for honing is the turnaround time, whereas the downsides to doing your own honing are the initial outlay in hones and the time it takes before you achieve usable results - especially if you don't have a mentor nearby to learn from. My personal path involved using a pasted strop and professional honing followed by learning to do touchups on a finishing hone, then finally the full honing circus. However you proceed, best of luck!

Hone/Stone ,,,,,,,,,,

Well I have a couple of thoughts. The first is a little early is always easier to stay on top of than a lot later. So if you are just wanting to maintain your blades a CrOx strop is cheap and easy, but not everyone like the finish. You can get a pasted bench strop for not much coin. See how you like it and then either continue with that process or buy a hone. You will need a nice finish hone, either a natural or a synthetic. By the time you get there you can look at many options.

I use both, which depends on far gone the edge is. I touch up a lot of my razors on a hanging linen strop coated with Thiers Issard White Paste. Works a charm and leaves a smooth keen edge. I like pastes and get great results....YMMV and all that