Thread: how to keep razor from rolling up in your hand?

I find when I strop I have to stop every 4 or 5 strokes and reposition my grip. I've tried several different grips and no matter which one the razor rolls up into my hand a bit each time I roll it. Is there a solution to this?

i haven't found any kind of different grip but I have tapped the pins tighter so the razor doesn't fold. if i can't get the pins to tighten i just have to slow down a bit, pita. the only other bit i have is concentrate on the blade, not the scales.

I have the tip of my forefinger on the spine/tang and the flat of my thumb pad on the bottom side of the tang directly opposite my forefinger. My three fingers, middle, ring, and little finger, are lightly supporting the scales. The 1961 barber manual excerpt PDF in the SRP Library recommends practicing the flip without stropping the razor until you feel you've got proficiency at it. Then begin moving along the strop. Check out the PDF, the last few pages are on stropping. What deadrift said about snug scales is right on.

http://straightrazorpalace.com/srpwi...t_-_Honing.pdf

I always tell people to practice the flip with a toothbrush or butterknife ... then try stropping.
Good advice so far on needing a properly adjusted pivot .

If you're gripping the tang of the razor, and it slides up your hand as you strop, and you find yourself gripping closer to the stabilizers....then your actual grip isn't tight enough on the tang to begin with.

Grip the tang slightly more, and concentrate on rolling the tang in your fingers. Like Oz says...butterknife or toothbrush first.

yea, the scourge of stropping. Loose scales, badly balanced razors, unusual blades,thumb notches. They all require adaptations. Don't even try them until you have general stropping down pat.

I don't mean it moves closer to the scales, it goes up my fingers closer to my palm. I'll have to make a vid to show what I mean.

The grip between pointer and thumb is in tension - thumb is pushing the shank toward the pointer, all the time. The best way to enable this is to have the *corner* of the top of the shank pushed into the thumb on each side of the flip. Things do not move then. This also avoids any issues with thumb notches, loose scales etc.

I just stropped two hand made blades without scales at almost the same speed as I normally do - I think once you get this grip down pat and get the flip working, it is pretty fool-proof. I show this grip in my "extreme stropping" video.

James.

I tried a vid and my camera is being a jerk.

What's happening is I start with the razor between my finger tips, after 2 or 3 rolls it's at the first knuckle, I'm still gripping the same place on the tang, it's just higher on my fingers, by the 5th roll it's at the 2nd knuckle. Each time it rolls it crawls up my fingers.

I'll have to watch some stropping vids again to figure this out. Thanks for the input everyone. I love this place.

Don't know if this will make sense but try using your other 3 fingers to aid the rotation. Like spinning a screw driver but with out wrist movement.