Thread: Ideas on setting up my strops, let hear em!

Hi, I have a Dovo extra wide Russian strop for my "main" strop (canvas on one side, leather the other), and I just purchased a four sided Thiers- issard strop. I am looking for some ideas on how I should set these up with pastes.

I have a Livi 6/8, a dovo 5/8 "singing", a feather club and another one, but the first two are the main Straights I use. I am trying to figure out the best "common sense" approach I should take to setting up my strops to be able to cover any stropping/light honing scenario that may occur. I have not treated my Russion strop with any paste at all yet, however I do have pretty much all the strop pastes. Some people say to treat a strop with paste right away, some say to wait until it has degraded a bit. So first, I would like to hear opinions on that.

For the four sided strop, I could pretty much "designate" each side to a different type of paste. I recently purchased .25 micron diamond paste. If I can designate each side with something, then I may be able to keep the blades in very good shape for a long time without having to hone them except rarely. So I would like to hear some ideas of how I should prepare or treat the sides of the strop for use in different situations.

Thanks in advance!

I know that I did not get many responses on this topic and it is probably due to the fact that this has been very well covered many times. However, I think that was mainly because of poor communication on my part. Nevertheless, this may get archived or something and I am sure someone will search for something like this so I thought I would just leave my decision.
After some research and then speaking with a couple extremely long time Straight users, I came to this conclusion: For strops, all one really NEEDS is one canvas/leather strop, and one double sided sharpening strop. One doesn't need to treat the leather on the canvas/leather strop until it has some pretty good wear. As to the sharpening, many will say a four sided strop with all the diamond pastes. However, some veterans I think feel that really a double sided sharpening strop with 1 and .5 is all you need, and if you end up getting a four sided, maybe you can leave two slots open for future possibilities (but why spent the money? and it is harder to store). So for the double, most say that using the 1 diamond for 20 or so strokes and then doing the same on the .5 side will get the blade as prepared as needed. if that doesn't work the first time, then do it again, and it will most likely suffice. So here is an alternative, certainly a simpler idea that seems like good common sense. that is no slam against the other ideas however. It just seems like for me, that makes everything much less needlessly intensive and easy to follow. and for me, now that I have about 6 blades and have spent into the four figures (sheesh, but I got a SWEET Boker Damascus), and my technique is DOWN. haha. I seem to be all set with all that I need to shave as StraightRazor to the path to ZEN for as long as I want!

Thanks for all the great advice for everyone that participates on this site, there are really some great people here. This site is an asset for something that is a great hobby! I am out!!

Actually I was thinking along the same lines, waiting til Tony has the 2 sided paddles back in stock.
I would put 1.0 diamond on one side and 0.5 on the other. Tony even sells it with small diamond paste containers.
The only thing is, should the 0.5 micron be diamond or Chromium? I've heard the diamond 0.5 can leave the edge a little rough.

I use the .5 diamond spray on felt on 90 percent of the razors I hone with great success.

Have fun,

Lynn

I think, that your setup is really on the dot. I don't have any paddles, myself. However, complementing the Dovo strop I have (with canvas and plain leather) I have a small home-made double-sided hanging strop that I use pasted with Chromium Oxide and with a weird Filarmonica made black paste (that seems to be quite coarse). I like the ChrOx and it seems to do a nice job. But I'm not much of a paste guy... although I only have a barber hone, I feel like the stones are my thing and not so much the pastes.
But again, your setup seems nice! Good job!

Originally Posted by Lynn

I use the .5 diamond spray on felt on 90 percent of the razors I hone with great success.

Have fun,

Lynn

Guess I'll order it from Tony with 2 pastes then (1.0 and 0.5). I can't argue with the results from the 6/8 Dovo I got from VintageBlades that was honed by you.

I have two of Tony's paddle's pasted with 1.0 and .5 diamond, Then .25 and Crox respectively. They are the only strops I have pasted. I like the paddles or flatbeads for pasting. The diamond pastes are great, but I found out that I get irritated from the .25 Diamond, now I don't know what to do with it. I really like the Crox though.