Thread: Does it matter WHEN you strop?

A material is said to be elastic if it deforms under stress (e.g., external forces), but then returns to its original shape when the stress is removed.

Elasticity is "shape memory" in its own right. That alloy page talks about a few different kinds of steels so I thought it might be more pertinent then it turned out to be, as it mostly refers to extremely elastic alloys.

Steel can stretch and return to it's original shape. On the types of alloys present in straight razors (which are hardened), forces past the point of yielding will just cause a shatter; you will rarely see deformation (though I guess it would be possible to bend your razor slightly, more easily done at the tang) and you will definitely not see "creep".

It depends on the alloy, but I imagine that razors (due to hardening) don't have a wide elastic range and can be very brittle; with little force they can chip and break. They are at least .6% carbon which gives them some flexibility, but you'll still break it before you deform it much.

I'm telling you stuff I'm sure you know, assuming you were required to take a "mechanics of materials" class in your physics major.

So, however the edge should deform from a shave, it makes sense that it would slowly try to return to it's original shape. How it does it, I'm not an expert there, I didn't dive into molecular mechanics much, but I finally found some stuff straight from DOVO, and I'm sure they have plenty of metallurgists on hand that know about what their talking about.

This information can be found here, but also at plenty of other sites that quote DOVO's information. I don't believe this information was written by native english speakers, but it gets the point across.

Wet shavers of the old school know that the facet (blade) "grows", i.e. the microscopically discernible and extremely fine "fin" on the cutting edge changes during the shave but returns to its old position afterwards; it stretches and again becomes extremely fine. Nevertheless, this fine "fin" will still wear away at some stage and a suitable strop should then be bought.

If you own a suitable strop, you should nevertheless take into account that the razor must first "rest" after use. After the razor has been carefully rinsed and dried, it should not be used again for at least 24 - 48 hours because the fine "fin" on the cutting edge straightens up again extremely slowly. If the razor is stropped too soon (or stropped incorrectly by moving it backwards and forwards without turning it over), the "fin" which is necessary for a close shave breaks off.

Further down the page, Arthur Boon elaborates. I think he works for DOVO as he seems to know how DOVO does things. He is also not a native english speaker.

When you shave, the cutting edge gets somewhat misaligned microscopically. It looks like microserrations, bending aside irregularly. If you put the knife away, the cutting edge stretches ('grows') spontaneously within 24 hours. After 3 or 4 shaves it should be aligned a little bit again and therefore you must strop. If you do that correctly, and treat the blade well, you only need to hone once every month or even year, and never send it in fro grinding.... The game is, to postpone honing as long as possible.

If you strop the edge immediately after shaving, the misaligned microserrations behave as a burr, which will break off

Essentially, if you strop right before you shave, you have let the blade rest for as long as possible since your last shave and you will be removing less "burr". This in turn leaves more of your edge intact for longer, and extending the time you have until you need to hone again. Take it with a grain of salt, but it makes sense.

Originally Posted by marosell

Scott:
...stropping essentially re"freshens" the edge by realigning any parts of the honed edge that are misaligned.

Ummm, ok...I thought that's basically what I said in my post. No?


Scott

sorry, i meant to agree with you and add more to it. i guess it should have read "indeed, a fresh edge and new edge are two different things". and i guess i didn't need to direct it towards you if i was just adding to it

Gottcha


Scott

Originally Posted by marosell

A material is said to be........[snip]..[snip]............a grain of salt, but it makes sense.

Thanks for that info marosell, that level of detail is really helpful, now I can understand it not just accept it as fact.

Could be one of the reasons why some gents can go months without refreshing their edge on a paste.

Makes me think a case study could be done, though it would take a while to see if repeatable results could be done on the same razor.

Also maybe the reason people have weekly rotation for razors?

yep, the more you have in your rotation, the longer you can go without honing any of them!

Originally Posted by marosell

yep, the more you have in your rotation, the longer you can go without honing any of them!

Don't tell me that, my RAD is bad enough!

Dovo faq being banded about again I see
I find it hard to understand how anyone can take as gospel the faq on dovos webby when they call 'stropping' "Wetting" and to then go on and say, and I quote: "There is no generally valid rule for the whetting (stropping) of straight razors; in many cases, it is sufficient to draw the razor lightly over the ball of the thumb"
They also imply that you only need to invest in a strop when this Thumb stropping [wetting ] fails to work. Do they not understand that they don't sell shave ready razors LOL, so you will need the strop ahead of thumbing your razor
Get this gem of a quote : Changing directions without turning the razor over makes the blade become round (crowned) so that the cutting properties are lost. In this case, only resharpening can help.

So to my mind, any one new to straight razor shaving should keep clear of this faq on Dovos site. It's not worth the thumb you'll loose after reading it or if the gods were on your side, the nice new TM strop you will slash up. I also feel that this faq can never support anyones arguments

PuFF

i have a feeling this was in german and translated to english, there may have been a lot of words or ideas that didn't cross over correctly. either way, it makes sense