Finishing Pastes..0.5, 0.25 or Chromium?

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Originally Posted by Ben325e

check japaneseknifesharpening.com for diamond sprays, and liquid chromium oxide. :)


BTW, the spray is .25 diamond.

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I have not tried Keith's Sprays but did read they are water based. This should be fine as it will not affect the glue but do apply in light coats and allow to dry between coats if using on one of my paddles. I have not tested mine with the effects of too much water, etc...... I doubt there would be an issue here.

Just a caveat on my products. I build them well but cannot anticipate what other compounds, etc... may do to them. saddle Soap, "Goop", etc.... are all mentioned here daily but I have not used them myself. For dressing either lexol, Neat's Foot Oil, Feiblings or Fromm/Illinois Strop dressings should be fine. Everything else...well, you are on your own.


Tony

Tony,

I have one of your 2 sided paddles with green .5 micron chromium on one side. I got it for a travel strop but because my beard is a razor killer I find myself going to it more and more because I seem to get better results than from the pasted balsa I was using before.

I'm a firm believer in less is more when it comes to using paste and find the green stuff gives me an edge that will squeegie off the whiskers and about 10 laps a week keeps it going that way for months before I have to get more aggressive.

I have a couple of stops, one antique shell horse hide that I love and two 3 inch cow hide that I have made. I have one of the strops pasted lightly with 0.5 CO. I hone down through a 8K Norton then go with 15 or 30 passes on the CO depending on how hard the steel is, carbon or stainless etc… Then finish it with 50 passes on the shell horse. It leaves me with an edge that will pop even the finest of hairs on contact, I have even managed to fillet one in half once when messing around one day. That is sharp enough for me.

I'm using .25 and .50 diamond pastes with excellent results on a balsa paddle.

Btw. as this balsa paddle with diamond paste goes a very long time, I would like to know if diamond paste in the Amplex siringue can dry out and how to avoid it.

i use co on leather on my handamerican corian base it provides a solid surface that doesnt give, like your pasted paddles tony, i use it sparingly of course, but it does make an edge more user friendly. btw i recieved my leather and linen today and i was so impressed by the finish and superb quality that my other strops are going to be used for my kitchen knives, i highly recommend your products they are second to none and truly made in the USA

Just wanted to chime in with my setup for statistical purposes...
For initial honing and for badly neglected edges, I use N4k/8k.
For finishing and touchups, a 12x3.25" piece of honeybrown cemented to a piece of marble tile and coated with a mix of your strop dressing and 0.5 micron chromium oxide. For freshly honed edges I use 3 hard strokes, 3 medium strokes and 4 light strokes. For touchups, usually it's 2x2x3. These are just ballparks as I test the edge throughout the process.

I recently purchased the "Classic Straight Razor Sharpening Set". In it, came a Thiers-Issard Double-Sided Sharpening Strop and two pastes ; one green & one red.

According to the description of this set, the strop has two different colored leather sides to it so that the user can easily identify which paste is applied to which side.

My questions are :

1) Are you supposed to strop before every shave?
2) How often should you apply the paste(s) to the leather?

My razor came "shave ready" so I didn't have to do anything, but now I have to strop it I believe.

Lil' help? :)

this set is a sharpening set, but isn't meant to be for stropping. I think you are meant to progress from the 4k to 8k to red paste then green past in sharpening.

Once you put paste on a strop, it stops doing the work of a strop and becomes a more of a sharpening tool. for stropping, you need leather that has been properly conditoned.

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Originally Posted by Pyment

this set is a sharpening set, but isn't meant to be for stropping. I think you are meant to progress from the 4k to 8k to red paste then green past in sharpening.

Once you put paste on a strop, it stops doing the work of a strop and becomes a more of a sharpening tool. for stropping, you need leather that has been properly conditoned.

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I'm confused. :confused:

I thought the stones (4k and 8k) were meant to hone, and the leather strop and pastes (in this kit), were meant for stropping.

My understanding is that you apply water on the stones for honing. And then to strop, you apply the pastes on each side of the leather strop. Is this not correct?

I have not yet applied the paste(s) to the strop. So, it's still just leather that has not been treated yet. What are your thoughts on how to strop my razor?

Should I purchase a separate strop, and keep the one I received in the set for sharpening with the paste or should I use the strop I received without applying the paste(s)?


HELP! :)

Stop and dont apply anything yet...

These are Dovo pastes the Green is not the CrOx that most people are talking about in this thread..

Dovo pastes go

Green about 5-8 micron (I personally have used this one maybe once or twice when I first got it)

Red about 3-5 micron

Black about 1-3 micron


These are much different than the Diamond or the CrOx that is being discussed in this thread...

I have found Dovo pastes to work very, very, well with the older razors like the W&B etc.. that however is JMHO... I have never really used these for touch ups, but I imagine they would work just fine