Thread: Stropping smiling blades

Originally Posted by JoshEarl

When I saw the title of this thread, I was like, "Nah, can't be..." But yep, it was mine. I posted this about a year ago. How did it get pulled up again?

I guess it's still relevant. I still have that razor, and I still avoid it because of the stropping thing... It's a swayback with a really pronounced smile. The times I've used it I've gone with a sweeping motion like Dale describes. I'll have to give that one another shot now.

Josh

I bumped it beacuse I have noticed scuffings appearing on my strop since acquiring a smiler. Looks like I'll have to avoid using it - at least it was cheap!

Ah, sorry--I missed that. With all the weird stuff that's been happening with the clocks and stuff, I just wondered if old posts were getting bumped automatically.

Josh

my tip for stroping a smiling blade is to use a 2" strop and use a "|||" type action.
Heal leading with a 20 degree drop back to the toe, first stroke up with toe at far edge all the way followed by the same on the down stroke. Razor centre of the strop with same angle, go up, down. heal at the edge of the strop, up, down. This way you can concentrate on the relavant areas as you strop rather that considering the edge as a whole while you strop.

PuFF

I've never owned a very smiley razor but I would probably approach stropping in a completely different way.

Perhaps if you visualise the blade in 3 parts.

Toe - Middle - Heel

Start stropping with deliberate pressure on the toe and then strop again with normal stropping technique which should in theory strop the middle and then use deliberate pressure on the heel. Using this method should 'in theory' produce a fully stropped smiley edge.

This probably sounds like mindless drivel but I'd like to give it a try.

p.s. I would like to patent this technique 'the poona technique' if it works

Feel free to shoot down my theory as I don't have a smiley blade to test it.

welsh...,

I got some scruffings on one of my strops too, but figured out it had nothing to do with the edge, rather it was a sharp edge on the french tip that was doing the mischief. The compliance of the hanging strop, versus the absolutely flat paddle strop, should accommodate a bit of a grin just fine.

good luck

I second the rolling technique described earlier. This seems to work on my W&B. Sometimes I don't even apply that technique at all and I get a nicely stropped edge. I guess I just get lucky with pressure here and there.

For all razors, I use a diagonal stroke and not X, for stropping on hanging (2") strop and I have not problem with smiling blades

Originally Posted by PuFFaH

my tip for stroping a smiling blade is to use a 2" strop and use a "|||" type action.
Heal leading with a 20 degree drop back to the toe, first stroke up with toe at far edge all the way followed by the same on the down stroke. Razor centre of the strop with same angle, go up, down. heal at the edge of the strop, up, down. This way you can concentrate on the relavant areas as you strop rather that considering the edge as a whole while you strop.

PuFF

I like that. As I thought through your description, and paid more attention as I stopped this morning, I realized that's similar to what I do when I described stropping just the distal half on my final stropping of the shave. What you described is also what I do when the edge is mostly there but needs a little more final edge work in one area (TPT feels right overall, but not sticky enough in one area...heel/middle/toe). Come to think of it, that's an advantage to the curve in the edge, it allows you to focus on a particular area of need.

Your description also reminds me that I had early success with my curved blades when I first used an old 1.25" loom/paddle strop. That narrow surface made it easier to follow the contour.

- Dale

I'm glad you were able to understand what I wrote
Like you have found, a slim strop can make it easier to bias strop to a part of the blade. Not that you can't do it on a wider strop, just a slimmer strop tends to "do as it's told" more readily. |\|/| is possibly a better sign for the stroke.

I started stropping this way when I started because it is easier to learn than X or sweep stroke. When I became more confident in stropping I progressed to the other techniques, but still fall back on this for framebacks and heavy smiles.

PuFF

I found bunch of really old threads getting bumped up recently - I found them quite interesting and some very entertaining too.
And just when you think newbies are not good for anything but to ask the same old questions over and over