Thread: why not strop on .5 all the time?

I had a question, I've been told to only strop on my 0.5 chrome strop when my razor starts to tug and will no longer shave smoothly. I was wondering why wait till then? aside from the possibility of accidentally dulling your razor with a miss stroke is there a reason you can't do one or two passes on pasted once a week, or even every other shave?

The diamonds are abrasive and will remove some steel from the edge. When you have perfectly working edge you have no need to use diamonds, when the edge starts to dull, then you can bring it back by stropping. If you let the edge go past certain point the diamond spray will not help, you will have to hone the razor.

You can only use crox a finite number of times before it will no longer be enough and you will need to go back to the hones. So the more you use it the quicker you will be honing and as you will be using it on a blade that doesn't require it there really is no need. If you use 5-10 laps every week or two this will be enough to keep you shaving for a fair while. If you cant get the keenness you need out of plain stropping and get a slight tug that's when to use it.

I had also read many thoughts about Pasted stropping and all the theories about the issues involved..

Back in 2009 I decided to test those theories here are the results

http://straightrazorpalace.com/strop...xperiment.html

I found that even trying to destroy the edge with much more stropping then needed, I gave up the experiment out of boredom because the edge never failed..

Chrome Oxide will refresh a flagging edge, but for daily maintenance stropping, Cerium or CBN at .125 is a better choice, at least for me.

One of the things I find most interesting is when honing on 1um film and using 2 pieces of copy paper, post 1um honing without paper, the same 1um film will polish the leading 1/3 of the bevel.

So a lot of things are going on, other than just the grit size, stropping medium, strop deflection, pressure and technique, which account for varied the results. In the 1um experiment above, only 2 variables are in effect, deflection and pressure, everything else is the same? Add more variables and it is no wonder results are even more varied.

Try it, see what works for you. There is no, one solution for everyone.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

I had also read many thoughts about Pasted stropping and all the theories about the issues involved..

Back in 2009 I decided to test those theories here are the results

http://straightrazorpalace.com/strop...xperiment.html

I found that even trying to destroy the edge with much more stropping then needed, I gave up the experiment out of boredom because the edge never failed..

so basicly from your experiment you didnt see any ill effects from paste stropping to often?