When to paste your strop?

Is there a solid way of seeing when you need to paste up your strop again?

I have the Dovo Strop and on the linen side there is a paste.. not sure which one tho.. But it works quite well

Is it White ????

yes sir - well the linen side is white.. so I am guessing the paste is white as well.

Did you get it second hand, or did you forget what was on it? Could be diamond spray or paste, could be dovo's brand paste, cerium oxide, thieres issard 10k diamond paste...hard to say. As far as when to reload, I go by sound. If it sounds the way it did when it was unpasted, then I reapply a small amount; some will still be trapped in the fibers to an extent so you don't want to gob it on. The sound when most of the surface coating is gone is a smoother sound ( to me atleast) than when it's fresh, or I have put a few blades over it. You can just wipe your hand over the surface; if you aren't getting particles on your hand, then the surface coating has worn off. I think everyone judges this in their own way...just works for me ya' know.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by adamf85

yes sir - well the linen side is white.. so I am guessing the paste is white as well.

---

Dovo has a Linen White Paste Dressing that they use.. I am going to give a number of razors instead of time so you can figure it out for your self :p

I go about 1000 razors before I clean and re-dress a linen strop

Glen is that white dressing an abrasive or what? When do you use the (white) pasted strop? Post honing? Touch ups? Every shave? Feed my brain, please;)

OK here is where things get foggy :)

I have never found info that the Dovo Paste is abrasive, I have seen info that the TI version is :shrug:

I use my Linen before every shave 25 laps then 50 Laps Leather some people do not :shrug:

I can only PROVE that something is coming off the razor and I feel good that it is not imbedding in my leather strop,,,, I THINK that Linen helps the shave, you have to try and see what you find.


ps: For clarification most every Linen Strop has a dressing on there from the factory

Interesting. I didn't know that they were all dressed.

I have only used nylon webbing and leather to date. AFAIK these are not pasted.

The treatmens that seem to be on the linen I have from SRD seem more like they are used to keep the material from "fluffing up" per se. I was bored and looked around a bit, and everything I found said it was slightly abrasive and used for a treatment for linen and canvas. Maybe as a treatment after they're cleaned to help keep the material from fuzzing out and coming off???? It does seem to be very vauge...even dovos site doesn't really describe it for anything other than "very fine polishing of the edge, but main uses as a linen treatment."

I think it kind of tries to emulate the old chalk loading the linen strops of old had without all the stiffness.

Of course that's just a guess.