Thread: Should I hone after new strop?

If you already have a new strop on the way, there's no harm in seeing if it will bring the edge back. On the other hand, if you have managed to keep the edge sharp enough for an entire year with only a strop.... You'll be shocked when you try it after a honing!

My personal opinion, send it out for honing and if both the honing and new strop are coming from SRD, might as well bung them both in the same box.

As for chucking the old strop..... WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? Unless I lop a strop in half, and there's NO chance of saving it... fine, I'll toss it (but I WILL save the hardware), but if it's just nicked a bunch of times and it still works... hey, keep it as a spare! I have 5 strops here... one is my Dad's who was a barber. I found it last weekend and decided to try and get it back into usable condition. I started to think about it, and I realized it must be at least 75 years old. It's very rubber like.... kind of an odd feel but it looks to be the same condition as the one that Liam uses at the Waldorf (check youtube). He strops on a scary slack strop.... Anyway, the point is that when I took a closer look at this strop, which would have come off Dads barber chair (He owned Dicks barber shop, and at his busiest, he was across the street from Hudsons Bay down town in Winnipeg and there were 5 other barbers working in his shop), it wasn't exactly shy of nicks... in fact, there's too many to count. Never the less, it's what hung on his chair and he had customers who waited for him to serve them, over going to one of the other barbers in the shop.

So... send the razor in (it's past due), order a new strop, but dig the old strop out of the garbage if you can.... It was working fine when you last used it.... it will keep working fine until you cut it in half.

I don't have any of my Dads razors or his hones, never mind the Latherking he had, but I have his strop and it feels fantastic compared to ALL my other newer strops. My strops are great, look great and keep my razors at the ready for the next shave, but that 75+ year old strop from my Dad has a feel that cannot be duplicated.

Regards

Christian