Thread: critique my stropping

Originally Posted by anjp

It seems more appropriate it place this thread in the Stropping forum than the Beginners...

However, I am a beginner and have only stropped my razor two or three times (have only shave two or three times). I'd like to make sure I nip any bad habits in the bud and am thereby asking anyone with a good degree of experience to watch my short stropping video and provide constructive feedback:

1 - is the strop taut enough?
2 - I'm trying to place very little pressure on the blade...is this correct?
3 - I'm trying not to turn my wrist too much but rather rotate the blade using my fingers.... is this correct?
4 - is my diagonal pattern adequate?

Please provide the feedback on SRP, not youtube

PS - I usually strop more than this....about 20x on the linen and 40x on the leather, but have cut it down in the video for the sake of brevity.

MY 2 CENTS:
It looks like you are pushing the blade down against the strop. I prefer to hold the spine against the strop and just let the edge trail along behind the spine. I adjust the pressure on the edge via torque. With this method you can use enough pressure on the spine to insure contact, but the force on the edge is controlled by the torque. So while the spine may be held firmly against the strop, the edge is whisking along with much less pressure.

The following diagram illustrates this principle. Bart has a cool animated diagram of this somewhere.