Thread: Question for those who don't use linen.

I rotate between razors too often to give an adequate answer to the OP but I can say one thing about leather only versus linen/leather. In the 1961 barber manual excerpt they are very definite that following the hones the razor should be stropped on leather only. Once you've shaved with it they say linen/leather if you choose to. Interestingly they point out that they don't know for sure that linen is effective.

Up until I read that I always stropped linen or webbed fabric and then leather. So I stopped the linen following the hones and went leather only. I found that for me I would pass the HHT way more if I stropped linen ... or webbed fabric before the leather. So that may have more to do with my honing expertise .... or the lack of it ... than with the effectiveness of linen but I like the stuff and do 50 and 50 before every shave. Sometimes I do it after the stones and sometimes I don't. My jury is still out on that. I always do leather only for 20 or 30 after the shave.

Originally Posted by ChrisL

Starting out I'd always heard of the guys that said they could go for months and months and months on one edge before needing to rehone. That was both a goal to ascribe to and a source of frustration for me. I have since learned in reading people's posts, that at least some of the guys who report long lasting edges between honing use linen and/or linen pasted with something such as Dovo white strop paste before every shave. In my mind, yes, such a practice does not negate a statement of being able to take edges stropped on pasted linen to months and months and months of use between "honing" sessions; however again in MY mind, I don't consider such descriptions entirely accurate in the literal sense. Chalked linen is abrasive. If I did just 3 passes on a chrome ox pasted linen strop prior to stropping on plain leather, the range of the duration of edge integrity I gave for my edges would go up considerably.

Your original impression was correct. You should be able to keep a razor going for months with just the leather and unpasted linen. That chalk or some other fine abrasive like chrome oxide can be helpful doesn't make them necessary.

If I am one of "the guys who report long lasting edges between honing" that you mention above, then I should clarify that I have a *lot* of strops, so my mention of my dovo white pasted strop doesn't mean that I use it daily or even regularly (though in this case I did use it for several months about a year ago). I don't generally use any paste at all on my daily strop. I believe that unpasted linen is sufficiently abrasive all by itself to maintain an edge for months. Although I have two with the Dovo white paste on them (one paddle, one hanger) they were used for a different experiment and are not used with my long-term razors. Similarly I have a variety of strops with coarser abrasives that were used for experiments or for honing specific types of razors, but such honing as I still engage in tends to be done on the Shaptons.

The problem is that good linen is hard to come by nowadays, and jute and cotton just don't quite perform the same way. I think cotton actually leaves a sharper edge than linen but it's very slow and can take an awful lot of laps to keep the edge going. Jute just never seemed to do much of anything, at least not the stuff that Dovo uses. In both of these cases the performance of the strop can be improved by the addition of chalk, which brings them up to roughly linen standards of performance. In these situations I do advocate using the Dovo white paste.

I'm still trying to make up my mind about the Kanoyama cotton strop though. It seems to work differently from the normal cotton, and I wonder if it doesn't have something else woven into the mix.

I've never used linen - all of my strops are leather only. Problem is I cannot exactly remember when I last honed some of the razors I use. My Friodur, for example, I am pretty sure that has gone well over a year now without any honing and I would use it once every two weeks or so. That seven day set you sent me Mark, I cannot remember exactly when I got it, but they are about ready for a touch up on the hone now, and I have been using two of those every second day since they arrived, on average. This is both head and face shaving.

I'm generally happy with how just plain leather performs, and not having ever had linen I do not feel its want at all.

James.

I've been shaving off of a 4/8 henckels that Glenn honed sometime back around March of this year... still sharp as I think it ever was and I've only used leather on it.

Originally Posted by Lynn

I am feeling another Glen experiment in the making.........

Actually, I am surprised by some of the findings here. I can go months on some razors with only stropping on leather.



Lynn

Originally Posted by Jimbo

I've never used linen - all of my strops are leather only. Problem is I cannot exactly remember when I last honed some of the razors I use. My Friodur, for example, I am pretty sure that has gone well over a year now without any honing and I would use it once every two weeks or so. That seven day set you sent me Mark, I cannot remember exactly when I got it, but they are about ready for a touch up on the hone now, and I have been using two of those every second day since they arrived, on average. This is both head and face shaving.

I'm generally happy with how just plain leather performs, and not having ever had linen I do not feel its want at all.

James.

Originally Posted by Del1r1um

I've been shaving off of a 4/8 henckels that Glenn honed sometime back around March of this year... still sharp as I think it ever was and I've only used leather on it.

Okay. I got 3 posts from 3 very respected members of this community that seem to suggest that linen is not necessary and as I have always used linen ( not pasted or chalked in any fashion for daily use ) I will bow to your combined wisdom and may even see how my edges do without linen.

I can't give a decent answer here as I just took a year off straight razor shaving, and my memory is hazy. But I know I certainly wasn't pulling the hone out every week. Just as a guess I'd say with a couple of razors in rotation I could probably go at least a month before going back to a hone or pasted strop of some sort.

Originally Posted by JMS

Okay. I got 3 posts from 3 very respected members of this community that seem to suggest that linen is not necessary and as I have always used linen ( not pasted or chalked in any fashion for daily use ) I will bow to your combined wisdom and may even see how my edges do without linen.

Let us know how leather only works for you Mark. I prefer linen/leather by far but I've already said that..... in spite of combined wisdom.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

t..... in spite of combined wisdom.

The combined wisdom only tells me that it is possible but not whether I am capable or not.

Mark I read the same posts but my interpretation is not as clear...

How many shaves are y'all getting from each razor before it needs to see the linen or the hone?

[Edit: my razors go weeks or months as well on leather only as I rotate them. I still need a larger rotation though ]

My long-term razors see the linen every shave. What I have tried to do in order to keep track of the number of shaves is to use them in stretches. My Heljestrand#31 for example was used every day for 2 3/4 months until I got sick of using it. It has accumulated additional shaves in 1-3wk stretches for easier accounting, resulting in nearly 150 shaves over a little more than 2 years. Similar stories for the Koeller (120+ but fading), TI (rehoned at ~90)and Friodur (~65 and holding steady).