Thread: Why Strop On Fabric Before Leather?

I used to put my razors in the oven to heat up and skip the linen… but it was hard on the scales and my bride complained about the smell of burning hair…

If you look at the SEM pictures on the "Science of Sharp" blog, you'll see that stropping on linen and stropping on leather can indeed do different things to the metal, especially when there is a foil edge or a rolled edge present. Specifically, the What does Stropping do? post tells a story with pictures.

Whoa, this is a necro post that has risen from the dead. The SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) pics on the link above while not quite as interesting as images of an unseen bug that lives in your armpit, are fascinating in themselves. The pics make me want to see some SEM pics of before and after beard/skin done by a straight razor. Somehow I think that the legendary BBS shave might in fact look like a hellish forest of stumps and holes.

I saw these pictures before, very interesting to look at the details of sharpening. You begin to understand more the process.