Thread: New and ready to take the plunge

Originally Posted by malaverdiere

That's the part I'm trying to understand!
What is it about a leather strop that makes it so desirable compared to a newspaper or balsa strop?
Better edge? Ease of use? Feeling like grandpa?

(Related question: why hanging strops vs bench strops?)

malaverdiere I apologize for just getting back to you and I am sure this has already been answered but I don't like to leave people hanging. You can certainly use newspaper and balsa to maintain an edge. The point of linen and leather is this, the linen side warms the edge to prep it for leather. The leather then straightens the edge and smooths it. That being said, you can from what I understand use a balsa strop with chromium oxide to maintain an edge for a long time. I have not used this method so I don't have any valid info to share on that point. I have tried the news paper and it does seem to work well. There are lots of other substrates that can be used as well, denim, felt and others I can not think of off hand.

Ill offer a bit of advice that helped me a bit with stropping. "burry" the spine in the strop. I put burry in quotes because you don't need excess pressure to get the job done but you do need a certain amount of pressure to get the job done. I like to explain it this way, put your razor on your strop spine only. Perform your stropping and listen to what that sounds like. It should be pretty quiet. Then take and lay the blade down and strop as you should with the blade laying flat you should notice a difference in how it sounds. This was how I finally understood how I knew that I was getting the contact that I needed. I hope I have not confused you with this explanation, if I have I will happily try and either share a video to show what I mean or pics. I hope you have success!

Originally Posted by ejmolitor37

Ill offer a bit of advice that helped me a bit with stropping. "burry" the spine in the strop. I put burry in quotes because you don't need excess pressure to get the job done but you do need a certain amount of pressure to get the job done. I like to explain it this way, put your razor on your strop spine only. Perform your stropping and listen to what that sounds like. It should be pretty quiet. Then take and lay the blade down and strop as you should with the blade laying flat you should notice a difference in how it sounds. This was how I finally understood how I knew that I was getting the contact that I needed. I hope I have not confused you with this explanation, if I have I will happily try and either share a video to show what I mean or pics. I hope you have success!

Thanks for the stropping advice. That's been my weakness in my SR journey so far.