Thread: Do we strop too much ?

I came accross this on ebay :



The instructions say to strop 2 or 3 times on leather ! I also have a few old instructions that appear on boxes and allot suggest very minimal stropping, the most i have seen i think was 6 passes.

It has got me thinking if our 80-100 passes is way over the top?

It may very well be a case of YMMV but i was wondering where the increased number suggested today came from and why in the olden days the number of strokes suggested is way way less

Thank you for posting this and I look forward to following the thread.
Something I have been thinking about lately.

Smooth Shaving...

Yea, sorta makes you wonder. I am going to follow this too. IIRC from when I was a kid the barbers did not do 80-100 strokes on leather before shaving a customer. If I had to guess from failing memory it would less than 20 strokes.

Bob

Thanks for posting it. Very interesting. I'm following the thread.

Och... "2 or 3 times", and each time, for 20-30 passes!

Originally Posted by BobH

Yea, sorta makes you wonder. I am going to follow this too. IIRC from when I was a kid the barbers did not do 80-100 strokes on leather before shaving a customer. If I had to guess from failing memory it would less than 20 strokes.

Bob

Agree, Bob. Of course we don't know what they did (other than read girly magazines) in the dead times when there were no customers. I wonder if they stropped then, or freshen on their barber hones. IIRC my barber had 4 or 5 SRs lined up on a towel along with his scissors.

If i remember correctly, i read a thread some time ago, and it said something alon the lines of - on european forums the recommended number of laps is considerably less than is recommended here.
I can only suggest an experement whereby you strop and use a razor 80-100 laps for 2-3 weeks, then strop and use the same razor for 2-6 laps until the edge degrades, then refresh, strop and use the razor for 2-6 laps for a week or two, noting if the edge degrades, then strop and use the razor for 80-100 laps and see if the edge improves.
Obviously for controls you would need to shave at the same time every day, with the same prep, and the same lather making and application.

Possibly in the old days people had only one razor, so you werent dealing with degradation from lack of use. I used a razor that had been laid up for a week or two and noticed a distinct degradation, to the point that mid shave i did 20 or so laps and got an improvement, and after a few shaves daily, and doinfg around 50 laps the shave improved. But i had no controls in place to ensure that all of the other variables were the same.

In the USA it is common knowledge, based on long experience, that in all areas except taxes and alimony, that more is better.

That said, in the 1980s 70 year old, 50 years barbering, Frank Natale looked at me gravely and told me, "You can overstrop a razor." I don't remember what he recommended as far as laps. He also told me that if I did more than 5 'weight of the blade' round trips on a coticule I might 'lose the edge.'

So with that bit of wisdom in mind I soon gave up trying to maintain my 1980s stable of straight razors, and went back to the Gillette Good News for another 20 + years. Coming to SRP, learning to hone, learning that there ain't nothing wrong with 50 linen, 50 leather, I have been maintaining and shaving with straight razors almost daily for the past 7 years. So ....... as my grandpa used to say, "Believe half of what you see, and nothing that you read." ........ Unless of course I post it.

Probably, we do strop more than needed, but I don’t think there is any harm being done.

I used to strop way more laps with paste removing most stria. As an experiment, I cut the number of laps in half leaving much of the stria and did not notice degradation in the quality of the shave.

As many here have discovered, the polish of the blade does not equate with the quality of the shave at a certain point.
Probably more important than polishing is the re-aligning of the edge and that does not take many laps.

Stropping is under rated, especially on linen, keeping the edge free of oxidation which will eat an edge. A barber’s razor will get many more laps daily than a razor that is use once a day and as a result will be much cleaner and free of contaminants that cause oxidation.

Myself after honing I do 10 linen and 40 leather. For my shave I do 20 before and 20 after On leather of course.