Thread: Pasted Strops a rough guide

I'm still trying to work out if paste is more efective on a strop or a leather 4 sidded paddle or single paddles? i seem to find hannging strop seems to be more efective or though as said above it seems a paddle or bench strop is better for the edge keeping it from convexing.

ChrisL (I think) bought one of those bunches of diamond pastes you can get on ebay and used them to hone (they go from 40 to .5 micron). If memory serves, he used balsa strops--and I think a harder wood for the larger diamonds-- and saw no edge rounding. I cant find the thread he kept up while doing this, but I'm sure someone can. It was a while back.

move to the DOVO Green and here you are looking to cut arm hair right above skin level. Next you will go to DOVO Red to pop arm hair about midway up the hair. Then DOVO Black to take just the tips off of the arm hair.

I really don't understand this. You mean the hair should shave off at various points above skin level??? Why would it cut hair at skin level, then midhair, then tips? That sounds odd to me......please help me understand.
If a razor is cutting hair, doesn't it always cut at skin level??

Jim

Hey Jim you are right that if a razor will cut arm hair at skin level it always will cut arm hair at skin level. But a razor that has a bevel set correctly can take arm hair off at skin level pretty much all the time at the correct 30 degrees. What I found work best for me to test sharpness was to see how high up the hair I could cut it off cleanly off of different paste or hones for that matter.

The idea of cutting the arm hair at different levels is similar to the HHT test but the hair is still attached to you giving the hair a different stiffness the farther you go from the skin make it harder to cut unless the razor is very sharp. I am looking for the same basic results as the HHT test. So when I say when I am done on DOVO green I can cut my arm hair just above skin level. I am cutting it a couple millimeters above skin level which will leave just a a little hair behind as if you were just trimming the hair. But if I was moving up the hair a couple more millimeters it would not cut or at least not cut cleanly. Then so on up the line with DOVO Red and DOVO Black.

There are all different test that you can use that are explained here: Sharpness tests explained - Straight Razor Place Wiki
I just found arm hair to be the best one for me.

Thank you so much for clearing that up. Your entire post on this topic has been excellent. I'm definetly going to be using pasted strop paddles because of your useful post.

Yours, Jim

I like this post as I did buy a 4 sided paddle strop from Tony Miller when I first started straight shaving and pasted up a few sides. This thing will last a liftime and I enjoy using it. It is very effective at keeping my straight razors tuned up and with a small rotation of three razors and I went over a year of shaving with them before a stone honing was due. I always thought if I used a barber hone with the pastes, they could go on performing well for years.

One razor which has soft metal did get its bevel worn out after about 70 shaves. The shave was very rough, although the edge was very sharp. I would lap it on the pastes, feel the edge with the thumb pad and think it was ready to shave, give it a pass on the sides and Yeowwww! After I gave it a stone honing and reestablished the bevel, it shaved as smooth as butter.

Pabster