Originally Posted by
holli4pirating
I don't know about now, but for some time, Lynn was going to a diamond spray on hard wool felt to finish all of his razors. Perhaps he will comment on his findings and whether or not he's still doing so.
I sometimes finish with chrome ox on the SRD webbing. I like it a lot, and have received positive feedback on it from others. I really don't think it matters how a razor is finished, paste vs hone, but maybe I simply have not experimented enough.
Paste can definitely refresh an edge, if its not too far gone, though maybe not indefinitely. I would say a pasted strop is definitely easier to use and definitely less expensive than the average finishing hone.
To respond to the OP, there is more to the equation, be it with pastes or hones, than just the grit rating. How the grit wears, how much the grit is exposed above the binder/material, the shape of the grit, how fast the binder breaks down to expose more/fresh grit, how flexible the surface is (more for strops), etc etc all matter. In order to figure out what works where for you, you'll need to experiment. You can definitely draw off of the experience of others, and you can use grit ratings as a guide, but grit ratings are not the end all and be all of it.