Thread: Strop treatments - How far should we take it PT 2.

I need to start at the beginning for this to all make sense. I'll make it short and sweet though.

1. Buddy said "try shaving with one of these"
2. Cut myself
3. Got good at shaving/stropping
4. Got good at honing
5. Got curious about a LOT of stuff.
6. I typically shave from either purple slate or welsh thuri and a regular stropping 40x linen 100x on horse shell.

So after reading and asking around and filling my head with as much information from this forum as possible I posed the question "how far should we take our strop treatments". We have stones that we call "finishers", shouldn't that be all you need? Many of us have posed this question and have formed our own opinions on it.

Personally I've shaved with a razor finished on a coticule, 12k naniwa ss, two of the welsh slate hones and all of the above treated with CrOx.

NOW, thanks to a guy down in Cali, a member here, (Euclid440), I've been able to shave off of a number of different treatments. About two weeks ago I received a little package from someone on the forum with two strops; one made from seatbelt style nylon webbing and another out of some strange woven paperish looking material. The nylon webbing was treated on oneside with CrOx and the other with CeOx. The paper strop was treated with CBN .5 on one side and .125 on the other. The strops came packaged appropriately and the construction of them was great. Big metal buckles were riveted to the nylon strop at both ends and bigger metal buckles were attached to the 'paper' strop, also at both ends. Detailed instructions were also provided.

To start my project I used my Plumacher 6/8 round point as well as my Friodur 7/8. I really wanted to know how these treatments performed on both carbon and stainless steel blades.

Previous bevels had already been established but, what the heck, for the sake of science I reset them both on my chosera 1k. After that I started on my Welsh slate progression DT Purple, Welsh Thuri. I then stropped and tested my edge to ensure I could go on.

Each shave will be 2 passes except the last; I'll go for a 3 pass.

Shaving begins:

Day 1: 20 laps CrOx - shaved half my face with the Plumacher other with the Friodur. Definitely smoother than my regular shave.
Day 2: 20 laps CeOx - edge definitely more 'lustrous' than with CrOx, great shave, no noticeable difference in feeling
Day 3: 10 laps .5 CBN - edge gleaming! shave noticeably smoother than CrOx, barely felt the blade on my face.
Day4: 10 laps .125 CBN - strange effect, edge almost seemed to 'disappear', 3 passes shaved extremely smooth, zero burn from post shave alum only a little from the Old spice.

Conclusion: This is an extremely cheap and easy setup to use and maintain an incredible edge.

Concerns:

Maintaining the 'nano edge': I've yet to see any degradation of my edge. I, however, haven't been viewing the progress under magnification. It is suggested that once your blade dulls 4 or 5 passes on the .5CBN and 4 or 5 on .125CBN will be enough to refresh your edge. I have yet to see any deterioration in shaving performance.

Paper material: Sounds like it might be cheap or lack durability. With this said, as long as you're not cutting the material with your blade, this stuff seems to withstand a fair amount of tug to keep tension on it. While using this setup you're really only letting the weight of the blade do the work, any further pressure is unnecessary. As far as how durable the material actually is, if it ever fails me, I'll be sure to comment on that.

Storing your strop: You can either plastic ziploc bag these babies, as they come shipped, or you can just hang them up. Apparently dust and skin etc are a higher 'grit' than .125 cbn. I personally wouldn't store these near heating ducts or anywhere that is noticeably dusty, if your house is that dusty, clean it. Euclid440 suggests hanging an clean towel over them to protect them.

Contamination: You ask yourself "How am I going to keep these things clean from contamination? Not only are you using 4 different grades of treatment, you need to hang them somewhere! You're right, my concerns are the same. After each treatment and before going to the next level, I wiped my blade with a piece of kleenex with a little rubbing alcohol on it. No transfer of treatment has been noticed so far.

IF you have an questions or comments about the products used, or you have concerns about the treatments etc feel free to comment or contact myself or Euclid440 via PM.