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  1. #21
    Member AFDavis11's Avatar
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    You can feel the edge as it develops on many types of strops. I'll say again, its the quality of the stropping that counts not the number of passes.

    Remember that:

    Only one razor was assigned to each bin in the experiment allowing for a great variation in our own personal stropping experience comparatively, remember Bigspendur was an expert shaver even back when he did this experiment, probably one of the best shavers on the planet. I, on the other hand, could easily add a variation to a control razor quite accidentally (and likely others could too). I would have wanted a few razors in each bin to account for other issues in technique.

    Two, the results are factors comparatively, they can make judgements about the time between honings for each of the tested factors. You can not, as easily, jump on the "more is better" bandwagon or think that you can account for every other option that is possible.

    I find that stropping on a varying scale starting at fewer and adding the number of strokes as needed achieves approximately twice the time (3 months) between honings that the original experiment did. I start with about 5 strokes and work through 10- 15 - 20- until I'm doing as many as 40 strokes total, but again I really don't pay too much attention to the number, only the results of the draw.

    So can we say that varying the stroke count and considering wear on the strop is better? I can, because I've compared it to other options, but I still can't say that this is the only/best way to strop to attain extended time between honings. I can only say I think its better compared to other methods I've tried (with emphasis on "I've", others might need to strop 60 just to get a good edge for the first shave).

    We still have members that claim they can go a year between honings, now that is a feat in my book. Still it leaves plenty of room for other options besides 30 before, 30 before and 30 after, and 60 before.

    What about 20 before and 20 after? What about 28 before? What if 28 before (instead of 30 before) goes out one day longer than what 30 before does? What about 2 on linen and 30 on leather? Or, how about 40 on leather? Huh oh . . . we haven't even talked about linen.

    I'm not even clear how you can decide that more is better based on these control bins? If more is better, then 1500 before and 1500 after would give you a razor that lasts forever right?

    Should we try that? I think I'd end up with a dull razor myself. You guys must think you'd need to rehone in 2009. Makes you wonder huh? I suppose I need to try that huh?

    I thought the point of the original experiment was to determine if before and after helped extend honing.

    From the original thread:

    "So, what can we conclude here in the postmortem? Well, first stroping 60x is better than 30x. I think that has been proven. Second, the difference between stroping 30x before and 30x after shaving is really no different than stroping 60x before."

    and:

    "I'm toying with the idea of taking the two SRPs and just stroping one 60x and the other 100x and seeing what happens"

    . . . and that never happened. But if it had, we'd know if 100 was better or 60 was better. We'd still not know if more is better.

    I think at some point, more is not better. Given the original experiment, in which I should remind you that razors were dropped when they became uncomfortable, not for a loss of sharpness, it was decided that 60 was better than 30. Thats all you can conclude. You can't assess what 40 would do. Heck I get three decent shaves before I even start stropping and 15 is a breeze.
    Last edited by AFDavis11; 06-09-2007 at 11:10 AM.

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