Search:

"This is getting interesting. My barber taught me years ago to hone going back and forth on a diagonal."

Ah okay then, that would make sense to me. From a barbering perspective and the training...

The only point I'm trying to make though is that there may be, or more importantly, they used to think that, there was a relationship between honing and stropping. So if you ask "why strop with an...

Reverse the motion before the razor touches down, otherwise you'll nick the strop to pieces. I can also assure you that any complete stropping pattern works really well.

Yes, I agree, assuming your fabulous graphic is color coded, one for hone, the other for a strop. But, then we would be getting questioned about the second pattern, wouldn't we? Why do I need to...

Are you asking me? I think it does in practice make it easier. I'm not smart enough to understand the first part of the question about the "opposite diagonal".

I don't think all that stuff...

I agree with the OP. If you are using a pattern that gets both edges, completely, on each stroke, it doesn't matter much.

The reasons an x pattern is recommended is that I think there was a...