So, I've watched every stropping video I can, but I'm still messing something up somewhere. I can take a perfectly shave worthy edge off a Swaty barber hone, and within 20 strokes on linen and 40 on leather make it tug and pull. For the life of me I cannot get the hang of this stropping thing. On the bright side, I'm not cutting the heck out of my strop.

Either I have a tension problem with the strop, or a pressure/torque problem with the razor. Or maybe a combination of the 2? I was tugging the strop pretty hard to keep it perfectly flat, but I've since come to realize that's probably not the right route and eased up considerably. Now I keep it taught, but allow it to flex some as I've seen in Lynn's videos.

I've also tried various pressure types on the blade. I'm sure I started out a little heavy handed. Applying slight torque to 'force' the edge against the strop just feels inherently wrong, like I'm probably rolling the edge. Lately I've settled on light pressure, like I use for finishing strokes, but that doesn't seem to be making head way either.

I guess my question is, how tight do you hold your strop, and for those of you who also hone your razors how much pressure do you use relative to honing strokes?