Thread: My stropping technique.

Rule #1 - Do what works for you.

That being said, I can't imagine this working well. You should really watch the stropping videos in the wiki.

Perhaps I'm getting the wrong impression from you, but it sounds like you're pretty much throwing your whole body forward and back; razor first. That's a recipe for disaster.

It also sounds like you're coming to a complete stop with the razor still on the strop. That is also a recipe for disaster. The slightest move in the wrong direction and you'll wreck the strop and your edge.

Stropping should be fluid and steady, not leaping forward and back with a razor.

Since you were the only one to respond to my question, you single handedly convinced me to conform.
You are right on both of accounts. I do throw my body weight into my stropping but I had taken Ki Aikido classes for a few years, that experience helps me control the motion. I also stop the blade while it still on the strop.
I am attempting to make it a more fluid motion, but I will not lie, I do feel like the way I used to strop, probably, shaved a month or two off my learning curve.

Take a look at the 1961 barber manual excerpt from the SRP Wiki here. The last couple of pages are concerned with stropping. Personally I prefer my strop waist high. This is equivalent to where the hook is on a Koken barber chair and what most pro barbers used as far as setting it up. I use a zip tie on a door knob.

The tang should be held between thumb and forefinger to allow the tactile feel to put light pressure on the edge and the wrist shoudn't turn. This is out of the manual.

Practicing flipping the razor on the strop until it becomes automatic without moving the arm is also recommended. I wish I had read all of this before I "learned" to strop.

I had a lot of bad habits to break but I succeeded in learning the correct technique. This assumes that the manual is correct and I think it is. IMO I would lose the body english.

Why do you believe it is important to strop fast during the stroke?

IMHO, going fast is a sure-fire way to get sloppy and ruin your edge. And I'm not aware that speed helps in any way.

Originally Posted by Kelby

Why do you believe it is important to strop fast during the stroke?

IMHO, going fast is a sure-fire way to get sloppy and ruin your edge. And I'm not aware that speed helps in any way.

There needs to be a certain amount of force to bend the steel. Since this cannot come from downward friction, a critical momentum needs to be met to really effectively strop. It's why you buff with rouge on a large, fast wheel- it will cut so slowly otherwise that it would take exponentially longer to get the same effect. No more pressure, just more speed.

Believe it or not, I used to play the accordion. And believe it or not, that is relevant to this thread!

One of the tricky things to learn about playing the accordion is finger placement of the right hand (on the black and white piano-style keys). To a beginner (well to me at least when I was a beginner) it feels (felt) more natural to place the thumb behind the keyboard to give the right hand more positive control. And it is true that it helps. BUT, you can never learn to play the accordion well that way. You need to bite the bullet and use all five fingers on top of the keyboard.

The relevant point is: What is best is not always the easiest for a beginner to master. In the *long run*, after some training, what the experts tell you is best will be best.

Originally Posted by BKratchmer

There needs to be a certain amount of force to bend the steel. Since this cannot come from downward friction, a critical momentum needs to be met to really effectively strop. It's why you buff with rouge on a large, fast wheel- it will cut so slowly otherwise that it would take exponentially longer to get the same effect. No more pressure, just more speed.

Wow, I couldn't disagree with this more.

No offense.

Stropping slowly works just fine. Assuming the downward pressure on the blade is equal, one slow stroke puts the same amount of force on the blade as a fast stroke. (As for buffing with rouge, it does not take exponentially longer with a slower wheel to get the same effect. A wheel that goes twice as fast takes about half the time to buff an object. Yes, I do a lot of buffing, and I have tried it.)

Not to say that stropping fast won't work if you do it accurately, but going slow also works just fine. I stropped slow for the first 8-10 years of straight razor shaving, and had no problems. I've sped up a bit over the past 5 or 6 years due to impatience, but don't get any better results. I still need the same number of strokes to get the blade the way I like it.

I see what you are saying. For me, I do not know how much downward pressure to speed Ratio I would need to ensure that I do no create a burr (that I read so much about) in my blade. I do know that speed and a feather light touch will not ruin my blade ( I haven't perfected stropping so I'm probably ruining my blade anyway).

Originally Posted by BKratchmer

There needs to be a certain amount of force to bend the steel. Since this cannot come from downward friction, a critical momentum needs to be met to really effectively strop. It's why you buff with rouge on a large, fast wheel- it will cut so slowly otherwise that it would take exponentially longer to get the same effect. No more pressure, just more speed.

There is NO physical support for this. Momentum=mass dot velocity (M=mdotV), or simplified, mass times speed (M=ms). Friction=normal times coefficient of friction (Fr=N(mu)). There is no reason to assume friction depends on speed. The friction on the blade edge is constant (assuming your downward (normal) force is constant)

If you were to supply an initial impulse there might be a critical momentum one would need to complete a stropping stroke, but since we are providing a constant force input, there is no "critical" momentum we need to achieve. This would be the same as accelerating a car to say 30 mph then letting it coast to a stop. In order to say, have that car travel 200m, one would need to have a critical momentum at the end of the acceleration. However, if you are going to supply a constant force (ie not coast) it would be a simple matter to travel 200m, you could have a momentum of 20kgm/s or 50 kgm/s it doesn't matter.

The reason you cut on a large, fast wheel is this. Distance = (pi)*d*w*t, or pi times diameter of the wheel times angular velocity times time. As such:
A 2" wheel, 2000rpm, 1 min= pi*d*w*t= 3*2*2000 = about 12000" a min.
A 4" wheel, 2000rpm, 1 min= pi*d*w*t= 3*4*2000 = about 24000" a min.
A 2" wheel, 4000rpm, 1 min= pi*d*w*t= 3*2*4000 = about 24000" a min.
Thus one can see, the bigger and faster a wheel, the more tangential distance is covered. The frictional force depends only on the normal force and coeffecient of friction, and the distance covered. Stropping faster allows you to cover more distance in a minute, but 60 laps in a minute or 60 laps in 5 mins should have the same effect.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Practicing flipping the razor on the strop until it becomes automatic

So, I wasn't completely wrong then.
Thank you for the link.
@ TexasBob. I am slowly trying, so I will do the best.