Thread: Value of a Swaty, Belgian?

I don't know if the rounding really happens to a significant degree or not. You don't really use any pressure on the strop, but there is obviously some pressure from the razor's weight. But I had some poplar slats lying around that looked like they could be turned into a paddle-like contraption, so I cut one of them up into 8" pieces, lapped them flat and pasted one with boron carbide and the other with chromium oxide, leaving a 2" unpasted bit at one end so I could hold them. The razors I used to refresh on the barber hones I now refresh on the BC, and the ones that were getting refreshed on the leather CO paddle now get refreshed on the poplar CO. Balsa would have been easier to lap than the poplar, and with less grain structure to cause problems. But the poplar seems to work well, and it's quite a bit harder than the balsa, though I'm pretty sure any improvement is mostly imaginary.

To clarify: The problem with grain is that the softer wood in the grain gets dished out a bit when you sand it. I mitigated this to some extent by wetting the surface fairly well, which lifts the grain back up a bit. It seems to work ok.