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I have several razors with nice smiles to them, and I'm wondering how you guys strop these things. I have a 2.5" Tony Miller hanger, and it can be really tough to get the toe and heel to hit the leather, even doing an X.
I tend to favor my straight-edged blades, even though a smile is supposed to be better.
Suggestions?
Josh
Hey Josh - there was a rolling strop thread a little while ago that (sort of) discussed this. I do an arc-type X stroke with the heel leading at the beginning (eventually with the toe leading at the end). Flip and you're ready for the reverse stroke...
I think this was what Scott (honedright) said he did too, but I'm not sure it's exclusively for smilers. However, I've found it works pretty well on smiling blades - it seems to create the equivalent of a rolling hone motion on the strop (at least for me).
James.
I have found from stropping my smiler and following my normal x pattern my strop has some scuffing in patches - is this normal?
I think if I ever use a smily I'm going to have to send it out for stropping.
The header says this quote was posted today at 1:55pm. I'm looking at it while my clock thinks it's today (1Mar08) at 9:38 am CST. How's your clock doing?Quote:
Originally Posted by AFDavis11
More confused than ever...:shrug:
Yeah, the clocks are all messed up on the forum now...
As for the stropping, in my own experience using an X-pattern on a hanging strop seems to work well. I would experiment with the amount of slack you give the strop which could allow for the blade to contact more. If it is too taught, it might not work. Just my opinion. :shrug:
Josh:
After reading this post when I woke up this morning I realized that I had never really thought about it before, I just stropped my few blades with smiles and shaved... So I went upstairs to the "Shave Den" and pulled out my Sway Back smiling A.G. Ashi and stropped it, trying not to think about it :)
I noticed that I use a slight flick in the wrist, to follow the contour of the blade as I strop, other than that, it is the same motion as a straight edge
Hope that helps I realize it is a little vauge...
I only have 2 smilies right now and frankly never thought of it... I just assumed I'd strop it fine... seems to be working ok too but my latest aquisition had a very pronounced smile and that one is going to take some work to strop I'm sure... In the meantime I just wish cutting new Heirloom strops in half didn't come quite so natural to me.:cen
Regards
Kaptain "I'm either a half wit or a complete idiot when it comes to stropping" Zero
All my shavers are curved blades. Not sure I can describe my technique in words, but it works. Basically I use an X pattern. The blade will not contact the strop the same as a straight blade. When the blade is flat, only part of the edge rests on the strop. When moving through the X, I'm sensitive to area of the blade that's touching and move evenly through the X for full coverage. While the blade stays flat, i kind of drag it laterally through the X, as I drag it lengthwise along the strop.
While all the edges of my shavers are curved, not all the backs are. For the ones with curved backs, it's a little trickier. For those, that lateral drag includes a very slight up-sweep of my hand to help follow the curved back.
My shave routine includes a pre-shave stropping and then another stropping before the final cleanup around my lips and chin. For that stropping, I spend more strokes on just the distal half of the blade, partly because that's what i'm using for the last of the shave. I still use the X, but less. Since I'm only stropping the distal half, there's less curve to accomodate.
Hope this helps in some way. Regardless of how well I can describe it, it works for me. My razors are curved, I get real stickiness with TPT, clean cutting HHTs and great shaves.
- Dale
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? :shrug:
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!Quote:
Originally Posted by JoshEarl
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:roflmao
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
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by PuFFaH
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 :roflmao
My favorite bumps are all my old threads about how it was taking me six months to learn to hone... :) I think a chimp would have had a shorter learning curve.
Josh
But now it's mastered it was well worth it. :-)
It took me 4 years! Now how do you think that makes me feel Josh? :)Quote:
Originally Posted by JoshEarl
But then you taught me. I probably would have taken at least twice as long to figure it out otherwise... :)Quote:
Originally Posted by AFDavis11
Josh
Thanks, Bruce.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruce
Hmmm, my scuffings are in the very middle of the stopr though. I will observe more closely to determine the culprit!