Thread: "Draw" on a strop?

So, I have one of Tony's latigo strops and a couple of razors honed by Lynn. What should I feel that is "draw" on the strop? Tony says to put dressing on when need more draw. On a new strop, I feel like the razors are just gliding over a fairly hard surface. Any hints?

--Paul

beckmann on SRP

Some strops just have more draw than others. The best way I can describe it is I hold the razor very loosly so when I strop on my Miller #1 strop the razor is almost pulled from my hand. Thats draw. But my DD #30 strop has no draw period no matter what I do. With some strops an application of dressing or rubbing with you hand to transfer some oil from your hand to the strop will help produce draw. The important thing is that after stropping your razor shaves well, draw or not.

You can have all the draw in the world but if your technique is poor you can mess up an edge but if you don't have draw you can still strop to perfection.

Bigspendur gives a good description for you.

I, too, have a #1 latigo from Tony and I find that when I start stropping, there is no draw. As I continue, I begin to feel it more. What I describe it like is suction that causes slight resistence. Like Bigspendur, were I to hold the razor very loosely, it would pull away from my hand. Once this starts, I can tell I'm just about done stropping.

Originally Posted by beckmann

So, I have one of Tony's latigo strops and a couple of razors honed by Lynn. What should I feel that is "draw" on the strop? Tony says to put dressing on when need more draw. On a new strop, I feel like the razors are just gliding over a fairly hard surface. Any hints?

--Paul

beckmann on SRP

As a newbie I have just about got a handle on this now and from a newbie point of view it does (as said above) feel like the razor is meeting resistance over the strop rather than just skittering over the strop surface. When I try put it into words I can only think friction...

To compensate for the 'gliding over the surface' I was stropping too firmly but advice from another member was to rub the strop with the heel of my hand for a minute or so and then use less pressure and relax my grip a little when stropping. This worked and I could feel the razor 'pulling back' but there is also a very different sound involved and that was the give away! What a difference it made!

(ps when I was gripping to hard I was applying more force on the edge than on the spine and this trashed my edged so the advice I got was a real Eureka moment!)

Simon