Thread: Abrasive Hanging Strops Users??

Don't think I need to post, Tony knows about my pasted hanging strop fetish

PuFF

I don't think I have a problem with rounding edges, but I only use my pasted strop (linen side only} after honing to give a smoother more polished edge and rarely to touch up a blade.
Oh, and I pull my strop like Mark Avery pulling on goat teats!

I ordered your latigo/linen 3" strop and it included a free "started".
I had been using the starter with green paste.(not sure what leather this is)

I just keep the abrasive to the center, keep the strop taught and it takes a decently finished edge from "nice" to "so nice I have to make a thread about it in the forum."
Hard to keep track of how often for each razor as I got a bunch of straights like we all do. My supergnome has gone a few shaves since it was last put to the pasted strop.

My first razor was a positively grinning old W&B quarter hollow that lay nowhere near flat on a hone. Naturally I couldn't get the damn thing sharp and started looking around on the internet and found my way to Lynn and this site. This razor got a Lynn-honing in July of 2006 and until about two months ago (when I finally got the knack of honing smilers and warpies on a very narrow hone) the only thing I could use to keep this thing sharp was a hanging linen strop with TI paste on one side and cigar ash on the other. Over the course of that year I probably refreshed it 12-15 times. No rounding at all. I know this because once I learned how to use my 5x1 escher properly and started taking the W&B to it, it didn't take any extra passes for the first refresh. If there had been rounding it would have taken a while to get all the way down the bevel to the edge.

I like this escher so much – so small and handy – that the pasted hanger's pretty much retired. But I won't say the edges I got from it were inferior to the escher's.

A pasted hanger properly used is a great tool, and I think half the talk about rounding is imaginary. It seems to me that with any hanging strop – pasted or not pasted – the piece of leather in contact with the bevel has to flush and flat. If your technique's good enough to strop on a non-pasted hanger and not roll your edge, then it's good enough to strop on a pasted hanger and not round your edge.

Now I may be talking out of my hat as far as the theory goes, but the fact is I've used pasted hangers extensively on a single razor and never saw any rounding.

Originally Posted by dylandog

A pasted hanger properly used is a great tool, and I think half the talk about rounding is imaginary. It seems to me that with any hanging strop – pasted or not pasted – the piece of leather in contact with the bevel has to flush and flat. If your technique's good enough to strop on a non-pasted hanger and not roll your edge, then it's good enough to strop on a pasted hanger and not round your edge.

.

You are probably right on this but I myself often promote the myth. There is plenty a newbie that has wiped the edge right off his razor on a plain strop so for those guys I continue the myth <g>.

Properly used they are a fine tool and it seems now from this thread a fairly popular one too. I will be honest and say my reason for asking this is marketing research. I like them but that is not enough to design a good product, making what works for the masses though, does.

I also want to expore what people like in a smaller, travel size strop.

Tony

Originally Posted by Tony Miller

You are probably right on this but I myself often promote the myth. There is plenty a newbie that has wiped the edge right off his razor on a plain strop so for those guys I continue the myth <g>.

Understood. And you're right to advocate caution. I just don't think it's all that different from regular stropping. The strop has to be very taut but it doesn't need to be flat as a board (as if that were possible). It seems to me (I could be wrong) that when stropping regularly on an unpasted hanger, even though the strop has a bit of play along its whole length, the patch between the spine and the edge will be flat at every given moment; the spine itself helps to ensure that by creating a plane. The part of the strop that wants to bend is the part in contact with the spine, since you're leading with it and it's heftier; at least to my eyes that's what seems to be happening.

It's probably worth mentioning that though a bit of pressure is great in regular stropping, with a pasted hanger zero pressure is probably best.

Dylandog,
I am right with you on the flat is not that important. No strop will ever beperfectly flat and ven under light pressure the section between spine and edge deforms a bit and provides 100% contact at the edge. Yes, flat is ideal but one can stary a good bit from theory and still get a good result.

Tony

In one of the old German razor books, linked on nassrasur, the use of pasted strop is advised only when the user has at least 10 years of experience using plain unpasted strop. It may be a wise advice, certainly given from experience.

Maybe 10 years is a tad long of a time, I would wait 3-4 years of experience buildup before using pasted hanging strop... Pasted paddle strop is great tool also...


Nenad

I don't, I do have a loom strop with chromium oxide (Puma paste) but I am not very impressed with it, I use it for travel but feel that your Latigo/genuine linen is better. Only some of my razors seem to benefit from the chromium oxide.

I hope this helps.

I think one consideration in it's use though is the very large surface area of a hanging vs. a paddle strop. Many commercially made paddles are only 1 3/8" x 8" and an average commercial hanging strop today is 2 1/2" x 24". if covered with abrasives I would think very few passes are needed.

In my experiments I am using 0.25 or 0.5 on a 2 1/2" wide strop with a usable length of 18". I'm only taking 2 or 3 up and down passes every shave or two, plus I rotate razors a lot so each one is maybe getting a quick pasting every 4 or 6 shaves. Probably not even the equivalent of a normal pasted paddle stropping but just a quick refresh.

Tony