Canvas or Linen?

[bokaba]

Which is better? Or only leather?

[JimmyHAD]

I like vintage linen followed by leather. I use the linen off of an old Red Imp and follow with one of Tony's Latigo/Horse strops. In that order. I do 50 linen & 15 or 20 each on the leather. After the shave I hit the horse for another 10 to get any micro crud out of the striations .

[Seraphim]

I had fairly marginal results with my TM canvas strop. I couldn't tell if it helped or not.

I then applied the Dovo white paste, and it supercharged the strop. Definitely a nice refresher before hitting the leather.


Or you can get by with just leather, depends on how fussy you like to be with this stuff

[hoglahoo]

Which is better? Or only leather?

I don't know

I like to strop on the pasted canvas side first and then on the leather side of my Tony Miller strop

[gssixgun]

Me, I'm a linen before each shave for 25 laps, then 50 leather kind of person....
I have never really gone for pasting a linen strop, all I want from it is to clean off the micro crud on the edge so I a stropping a clean fresh edge on the leather....
For a recharge on them I have only used the Dovo white paste and was not that impressed.. Now I just use white chalk after a stiff brushing once a year....

[thebigspendur]

I have both Linen and canvas and prefer the linen though I don't know if performance wise there is any difference.

[Bruce]

I've started using the linen too, as a pre-leather strop, but I'll be dipped if I can feel a remarkable difference in shave quality. Maybe I need to try a chalked linen stropage before my leatheration.

This may be getting too complicated for this one of demonstrably limited capabilities.

[sicboater]

I have the TM linen/horsehide and I can't tell how much I am getting out of the linen. The horse is awesome as a finishing strop or a start to finish for my full hollow 6/8 and less. I also use the Illinois 827 and the linen on it is more like a plastic impregnated canvas. It's as stiff as frontier whiskey and it gets discolored as I use it and I can tell a difference in the edge longevity if I use the Illinois linen. I wash it with lather once every couple of months but the leather and horsehide get a hand rub down every day and nothing else except a stiff brushing every year.

[kelbro]

I really like the hard linen on my Illinois. You can SEE that it's doing some burnishing (I couldn't with canvas) and I can feel the difference in my shaves since I upped the laps on the linen side.

[niftyshaving]

Which is better? Or only leather?

Hmmm... old threads should be locked... but here goes.

Canvas or Linen...??

There is cotton canvas, there is linen canvas, there is hemp canvas
there is ...... canvas is the weave and weight of the fabric.

Is the question "canvas or leather?"

If so the answer is both canvas and leather are important
tools to maintain and set a straight razor's edge.

To maintain an edge a clean canvas followed by
leather is the time proven solution with most of
the stropping on leather. A canvas has fiber that
can snag and grab small burrs and hooks on the edge
and straighten or eliminate them. Leather
smooths the edge and perfects what the canvas did.
Over time canvas will collect small bits of steel which
will oxidize and then act like sub-micron abrasive same
with small bits of carbide.

After honing the canvas does what canvas does and
is important to very important depending on the steel, hone
and honer. Hones especially classic hones leave
more imperfections than shaving imparts on an
edge. After honing more strokes on the canvas
are often called for depending on the hone. Modern +12K
Hones not so much....

My rule of thumb to start..
After shaving 10 canvas followed by 20-40 on leather
After honing 50-70 canvas followed by 40-60 leather.

For after honing 12Ksuperstone I like to have a canvas that has a light
spritz of 0.5 micron or 0.25 micron abrasive on it.

After honing on a barber hone I am finding 1 or 2 micron diamond
on leather or canvas helps a lot. I have started using a smear
of toothpaste on my barber hone and that results in a finer
edge for me (your mileage may vary) that I am learning to like.


Summary:
Stropping after shaving is not the same game as stropping after honing.

For most of us that just shave -- clean canvas 10-20 strokes
followed by 20-50 on leather is a good place to start.

For those that hone razors.... what ever works, works.