Thread: Tape when honing = tape on balsa?

Originally Posted by Zephyr

Once I was told that it's never necessary to tape the spine when finishing or touching up a razor on a pasted balsa strop, but lately I have been thinking about this, and have started to question this statement.

When a razor is honed with tape the angle of the bevel will be slightly different than without, wouldn't this also affect the result when using a balsa strop?

That sounds right to me. But:

Most people who sharpen with tape on the spine, strop (on leather) without tape. So they think that the strop will "wrap around" the slightly mis-angled bevel.

The balsa is softer than a stone, and less flexible than leather -- it fits somewhere in between. It might be soft enough to "wrap around" the slightly-wrong-angled bevel in the same way a leather strop would.

An ideal question for a controlled experiment . . .

Charles

I would try a microscope and find out especially those of you that have the ones that you can capture pics for here....

That would be interesting to see...

My brain is telling me we are talking about 1/2 of 1 degree of angle change on a surface that is measured in fractions of microns so I don't see how it could make a huge difference... But I don't use Balsa so I am only guessing...