Facinating discussion, gentlemen. Confirms some things I have found more or less accidentally recently. As with the great spirit of this thread, these are IMHO (especially since I'm olnly a few months old in the str8 family).

My best, most predictable and repeatable stropping results have been on a very narrow old pasteless loom strop (I think that's what it is) that is only about 1.25 wide and about 11" long. For me it seems that the x-pattern gives me a better feel for the razor/strop and razor/stone contact, allowing me better control with better contact. It also covers the full length of the blade better. I'm sure there are other variables, but I consistently had more trouble getting/keeping the toe of the blade sharp when I was stropping x-less on a wide hanging strop. Variables aside, that is just to say that the narrow surface + x-pattern can put a great edge on a razor, even for a relative newbie. Even when I occassionaly use a wider strop, I'm x-ing more now and have much less of the dull-toe problems I consistently had before.

On the hone front, I had an old Hess razor with broken scales and a severe frown that a barber gave me when I bought his hones and text book. Wanting something to practice with on my barber hone, I took it to 1k/2k ceramic stones to get the frown out first. Then I took it to the small barber hones. Didn't really expect to make it shave as it was broken out of the scales. Just did it to get a feel for the hones without over-analysing the procedural details. In pretty short order it seemed pretty good and passed the thumbnail test. So I stropped it, first on a home-made paddle strop with buffing compound, finishing it with x's on a hanging, unpasted Illinois 127. WOW! Sharpest razor in my small collection! HHT never dropped so cleanly, heel to toe! So I took my other small tribe of razors back to the barber hones with an x-pattern, and just "feeling it". Same stroppign and in short order (minutes, not days!) I had the same results on those. The x-pattern and feeling the edge/spine contact really makes a difference for me. (BTW, I have since mounted that Hess in home-made scales and have great shaves with it!). I've been stropping my daily shavers on the little loom strop with great results every day with much less time/effort than I was putting into non-X'd wider strops.

-- Dale