Thread: Strop Pasting Questions?

Are any of you guys familiar with this paste?
I bought some back when i was an eager newbie and put some of the red (more agressive of the two pastes) on an old eBay strop.
Soon after that my wife got me a brand new strop and i also had my razors professionally honed, so I've just been using the new strop with no paste on those razors.
I'm now honing my razors myself and would like to look back into trying some pastes but I'm not sure if this is a good or bad product as i haven't seen anyone mention it here on SRP.
Any advice?
Grant

I'm not familiar with that paste but I would for sure leave my daily strop unpasted. I've been messing with 1/8" balsa glued to plexiglass and it is cheap and works well for pasting/stropping.

I thought that was the Dovo paste, though i may be wrong. I've got a strop pasted with it. I'm not using it now that my honing has improved.
In my experience it works well. It's rated at 3-5 microns, I believe, which is a fairly broad band.
I think that if I was to rely on pastes more, I'd probably use some of the options more widely favoured here. That might be unfair though, because twinned with the black, it's been pretty good in my experience.

It works great, when used properly...

The red is rated at 3-5 the black at 1-3 and yes that is Dovo paste

These ratings are not comparable to Diamond, or CrOx, or CeOx pastes

They also have a green paste that is the most aggressive one of the three at 5-8

These pastes work really well on leather and they work the best on the older Sheffield razors...

Again don't try an compare the grit ratings, just like all those charts comparing stones they are not accurate for real world applications...

These are a much softer application sorta like comparing a natural 8k to a synthetic 8k ....

As verified above, that is Dovo red and black pastes. And, I use them a lot. But, I have to admit that using these pastes are probably not the best way to go. Right now, though, I am definitely operating on the cheap until I slowly accumulate better hones and equipment.

That being said, using these pastes (see below), I am getting very good edges that shave well. I bought a shave ready razor from Lynn Abrams for comparison, and my edges are definitely now in the neighborhood of respectability.

Here's the progression I use to maintain my razors...

Swaty barbers hone, Red Dovo paste, Black Dovo paste, Chromium Oxide 0.5 micron paste, unpasted strop. The pastes are applied to balsa wood. I use the Radio Shack 100x microscope a lot at this early stage in my "career."

I am not recommending use of the above as it seems that there are better methods and equipment. Just, so far, I'm "on the cheap" and getting the job done.

(My two bits on the Dovo pastes you asked about.)

The biggest problem I have had with these pastes and I have used them on leather, cotton, poly webbing and felt, is that if you have two razors in your hand and strop both of them using one of these pastes, it is very likely that only one will be where you want it to be. Sometimes the second razor even requires a trip back to the hone. Not a clue as to why.

Lynn