Stropping, huh, what is it good for?

[pcm]

Like the Edwin Starr's song WAR (

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dKAX7Jp8wo

), I was wondering what the benefit of stopping with linen, webbing, leather, and CR-OX. I've been blinding following a regiment and hadn't really checked to see what the benefits were of my steps. Well, I have a USB microscope, so I wanted to look and see what happens with the different tools I'm using.

Including pictures here for your reading pleasure and discussion.

Razor: J.A. Henckels that I had just honed and gone through about 10 shaves or so. I typically shave, do 25 strokes on linen, and 75 strokes on leather (again just based on what I hear, and think I ought to do). I would, after many shaves and when I thought it was tugging a bit, do 5-10 strokes on a Cr-Ox coated webbed strop, before the linen and leather stropping.

Strops: I have a SRD 3" strop with leather and white linen(?) cloth. I have an older SRD 2.5" black latigo leather strop with a synthetic? webbed strop where on one side I have Cr-Ox paste in X patterns (maybe 4 Xs) and the other side I have a thin coating of Cr-Ox on the entire surface of the strop.

Goals: I wanted to see, what, if anything the Cr-Ox pasted strops did. Likewise, I was wondering about the difference between the linen and leather, and whether I doing less or more stropping mattered.

This is all empirical results, with the strops that I have, blade I'm using for this, and (obviously) my skill at stropping. YMMV.

So... here is a sample pair of photos of the middle of the edge, using my USB microscope, set for the highest magnification (maybe 200x). In latter shots, I tried to take all the pictures in the same area (I had a mark in the hollow to get me roughly in the same area).

STEP 0: Post shave, blotted with a towel (baseline):



STEP 1: Using X patterned Cr-Ox on webbed strop - 5 X strokes. With that, I see this:



Comment: I was surprised at the intensity of the effect of the Cr-Ox.


STEP 2: 50 strokes on 3" leather. The results are:




STEP 3: Another 50 strokes on leather (to see what happens):



So that's what happens, in my scenario. In the next post, I'll try the linen...

(Ignore the attached posts. I redid attaching files and can't seem to get rid of the duplicates.)