Glad to see another multi lap stropper, I don't feel like the lone ranger. One thing that made me a believer was the HHT. I wasn't ever getting it off of the hones but I would sometimes get it after honing and stropping. I read the fore mentioned post by mparker and increased my laps to 50 and 50. Suddenly I was getting HHT on most of my razors.

One thing that interests me is the barber manual excerpt on stropping and honing in the SRP Wiki Help files here. The writer says that you should go straight to the leather only following the hone and to the linen/leather following the shave. I resisted this for a long time as what I had been doing was working and I saw no need to fix it. Lately I have been following that instruction of leather only following the hones and it seems to be giving me as good a result as the linen/leather did.

Another interesting point in the manual is his saying that while the leather is considered indispensable the canvas is optional according to some barbers. He goes on to say that with certain hones the canvas is necessary. Even the experts of olden times suffered from YMMV.