+1.
I think Dylandog got in touch with all the nuances. Honing on stones and stropping on pastes both call for carefull consideration when to do how much on which abrasive medium.
That said, after a long interruption, I recently started using CrO again. I have it on a loom strop that I keep very taut. Do you guys thing that it makes a difference, whether you have it on a felt pad, balsa, a paddle, or a loom strop? I can see the difference between slack and taut, but I 'm primarily asking about the different substrates.
I always test my edge with a HHT after finishing on a hone. My HHT is calibrated, which means that I have a strand of hair in a box, for HHT-use and that I know how to read the outcome, just like I know how to read the other sharpness test. When I strop my freshly honed edge, I always notice a very distict improvement in the HHT. I call that "getting a fin going". Sometimes I have a razor that has difficulty "getting a good fin going" on just the strop, although the test results before stropping all indicate a good honing job. In such cases I do about light 10 laps on my CrO loom strop. It mostly does the job. The funny thing is, razors that "get the fin going" right of the leather strop, show no improvement whatsoever from the CrO, not in the HHT-results, nor during shave tests.
After a number of shaves, when plain leather stropping no longer seems to restore the fin, I find that 20 laps on my loom strop usually bring it up to par again, but that "second round" never holds as many shaves as the "first round". In my personal shaving practice, let's say a dozen shaves from "round 1" and 8 or so from "round 2". I 've always kept doing touch-ups on CrO, but I haven't tried a third one in a long time. Do you guys have similar experiences?
Nice thread :tu,
Bart.