Thread: Puffah was right: linen IS a restorer

I've posted many threads in the past about my steel-eating beard. I just discovered that instead of touching up on a hone, I can bring the edge back from the dead by doing more strokes on linen than I normally would (say, 35 or 50 instead of the usual 20). I assume this trick will only work a finite number of times. But for you chaps with heavy beards, try doing extra linen when you would normally touch up & let me know what happens..

Yep, I do 50 & 50 every time I shave, keeps edges sharp MUCH longer

My leather and linen strops are attached, so the inside of the linen still looks like it has never been used while the outside is a bit softer from decades of use. (bought it second hand)

I would say that not only are you perfectly correct, but the coarser you linen strop is, the more it can do.

Maybe the thing to do is take off the hardware holding them together & flip the linen around, so you can use the unworn side.

Maybe its just ironed flat.
It will come back o life when you make it a bit humid.

Originally Posted by Johnny J

Maybe the thing to do is take off the hardware holding them together & flip the linen around, so you can use the unworn side.

Actually, I really like it just the way it is. The unworn side is very coarse, and the worn side is nicely broken in. I use the broken in side with every shave, and once a week I spend some time on the "fresh" side by flipping the leather back over the towel bar I have it tied up to. I may eventually go as far as to put some mild abrasive on the inside, to make it even coarser.

Everything has abrasive qualities. Put an edge under a moving water stream and in about 50,000 years you'll have the keenest razor in the world.

The linen is just the next step below leather with probably newspaper coming next.

I've been convinced of the beneficial qualities of linen for quite some time now. Every now and then a thread or poll is started asking everyones opinion on linen/canvas, and it usually turns out mixed. It's been my experience that linen does in fact supplement the leather very noticeably; if your razor starts to pull a bit just add more laps on the linen (and maybe the leather too for good measure). This usually delays a trip to the hones for a while.