A stropping observation: remembered

Hey fellas, I was just reflecting on some of the obstacles I had when getting into straight shaving, and I remembered something that used to give me fits while I was learning to strop.

I hope this is helpful to anyone starting out, or just to tell about my experiences (if nothing else).

So here is what the problem used to be:
When I first tried stropping I wanted to start "the right way" by making sure to do a few things that I learned from reading the wiki, other posts etc.

1. keep the strop tight
2. use only the weight of the blade
3. make nice spine leading strokes, covering the entire edge
4. at the end of each stroke, roll the razor over the spine between my thumb and forefinger without bending the wrist

Now, there is a lot that could be said for any of these steps, but my problem was with #4.

I found that as I stropped away from me and got to the end of my stroke, I could roll the razor easily. When I was stropping toward me though, I had a hard time rolling the razor between my finger and thumb at the end of the stroke. When I tried to roll the razor, I would end up with 1/2 of a roll, then a slap! of the blade down onto the strop. This resulted in a few nicks in some nice latigo :(

Anyway, this would usually happen when I tried hardest to follow all 4 of the steps above... 'Pulling strop tight'- Check!... 'feather light pressure'- Check!... nice stroke- Check!... good rolling actio*SLAP*- dang:confused:

After some "on the strop learning", I kind of found out that I was letting steps 1 and 2 mess with my head so much that it was making me ruin step 4.
By being paranoid about a tight strop, I was pulling way too hard throughout the process.

By worrying about using zero weight on the strop, I ended up holding the razor with such a light grasp, that I would lose control of my rolling motion some of the time. For some reason, I was barely gripping the razor at all, and the rolling action when it was closest to my body became really sloppy ending with a loss of control and a nick in the strop.

Two things have really helped me since then, and I'll submit them for your scrutiny:

1. don't go overboard on the strop tightness, once it's taut you don't need to pull any wall anchors out or anything.

2. you can still have a decent grip on the tang of your razor and make light strokes on the strop. Don't get tunnel vision from trying to make your strokes light that you aren't holding your razor securely.


I hope it was worth the look

later guys

Great advice I had experienced some of the same types of problems in the beginning. It seems like when you get to the point where you have enough experience in order to be confident in your stropping it all seems to come together. That ability to get into a sort of zone where you are able to get nice consistent fluid strokes.

Yes your advice is true enough.

I started before these sites existed so I learned on my own so yea I turn my wrist at the end of each stroke but it works for me. I've tried it without bending my wrist and that means unlearning what I've been doing for years and I don't see any real reason for it since the result won't be any better. Of course if your first learning it's better to do it the proper way.