Another way to apply pastes

[Pete_S]

A while back, I got some Dovo pastes. In the past, when I've tried to apply a paste from a tube, or wax paste, I've always gotten crappy results. Things usually end up looking like this:


Dovo white on homemade denim strop. This is after wetting and rubbing the paste out, it was worse before.


The paste is unevenly applied, with little hard spots where the paste has saturated the material. I didn't want to replicate these results. So, I searched around, and found a British website that sells Dovo pastes. It instructed purchasers to apply the paste to a cloth, then to rub the cloth on the strop. That sounded like a good idea, so I decided to give it a try. (I included this info because I didn't come up with this idea myself, and didn't want to make out like I had)

For this demonstration I have a "strop" which is several layers of newspaper taped to a board. I use this (not surprisingly) to strop on newspaper when I feel the need. I included the following as "before" shots.



Newspaper on board.


Again.



I drew a dividing line on the board b/c I plan to use two different pastes, and to mark the areas to be pasted. The box on the end is there b/c I marked out too small of an area the fist time, so I lengthened the dividing line and added another end line.

Uh-oh, we've got a problem. Strop cat has found the board, and isn't happy about there not being any paste--



No paste on strop?


I is want paste on strop right here now.



OK, strop cat! We'll get that paste on for you right away!

[Pete_S]

First step in applying, just rub the paste onto a small area of cloth. I'm using a cheap terry cloth shop rag I picked up at Sams. I think terry cloth is good for this b/c it has higher and lower areas, and is rough?-whatever you call the texture it has. You have to press for the paste in the "crevices" (or whatever you call them) to come in contact with the strop's surface, allowing a more even and controlled application. Anyway, after you apply the paste to the cloth, you close it, and smear the pasted area around, so that the paste is distributed more evenly. You want to smear/rub hard so there are no clumps.


Paste on cloth


Closing the cloth to rub it around


More evenly spread out. Notice that the paste isnt clumped like it is after the initial application.


I didn't get any pics of the actual pasting, I didn't really think about doing that. Anyway, to apply, you stick out the first two fingers of your dominant hand, and get the cloth kind of wrapped around them, using your thumb and other fingers to grip the cloth. You want to make sure that the area of paste saturated cloth is right beneath your fingertips, so that you have good control over the amount of force you can use. You begin by VERY LIGHTLY rubbing the cloth over the strop. As the paste on the top layers of the cloth is transferred to the strop you can begin to use more pressure, to get to paste deeper in the cloth pressed to the strop.

This is one half of the strop covered in Dovo black. Most of the dark coloration is from the paste, not the smearing of newsprint, though there is some of that. See how light and even the application is? This method makes it hard to overpaste.

(A note on the pictures-the areas farther from the camera are more accurate, the coloration of the paste was washed out by the flash closer to the camera.)

[Pete_S]

Because I wasn't sure how the Dovo black pics would turn out, I went ahead and applied Dovo red to the other side. First, more pics of the application to the cloth:



Rubbing it on


This is not how you want the paste to look before applying


This is what you want.


The second pic above shows clumping pretty well. If you use a cloth with clumps like that your results won't be as good. You'll get something like the denim strop above, though probably not quite as bad. Note that the paste on the third pic actually covers a larger area then can be seen, the flash washed out color there, too. This was a continual problem as it made it hard to get pics of the application on the strop.

This first pic shows one application of Dovo red paste. I applied it a second time so it would show up better, but the single application would have been enough for actual use. You really don't want to over apply paste. You get much, much better results with a light application.



First application. The dark red streaks near the blue box are areas where I pressed down very hard. I wanted some somewhat dark areas for the pictures. This is also true for the darker streak of the Dovo black.


Second application


Close up.


A good way to see the contrast from the paste is to look at the area along the black marker divider line. There is a strip of unpasted newspaper that gives a good contrast to the areas where the paste is. This is the case on most of the pics of the strop.


This is the best (and easiest) method to apply paste that I've tried (for me, at least), and I plan to use it for applying pretty much any type of paste from now on, even powders mixed with oil. (I say this b/c I used the oil based method on a new TM practice strop, and ended up with an oily black strop instead of a nice brown one.) Overall, I've been pleased with the results. I'm glad I happened upon that website.