Thread: Strop material for diamond paste?

Originally Posted by vmspb

Could you show your hanging paper strop, please, to understand what is the Pellon paper?

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I didn't go whole hog with the .125 CBN, but I did get some .25 on the way. If that goes well then I may try out the .125 further down the road.

Got a chance to try out the .25 CBN today. I have to say, I'm very surprised.

I didn't go to the extent of getting a whole new strop for it. I took the stand alone poly webbing strop I made when I decided to put linen on my SRD strop and put the CBN on the back. So it has .50 CrOx on one side, CBN on the other. Then I took my Germania Cutlery Works that I had previously honed up on a Kuromaku 12K hone, stropped it 25 strokes on linen, then did 10 strokes each CrOx and CBN. It was against my better judgement, but I went ahead and stropped it the same as I did when the razor was fresh off the 12K hone. 100 laps each linen and leather, because after the Shapton 12K and CrOx that many laps wasn't quite enough to tame the edge down the first go around.

I was expecting that super keen edge I usually get off a synthetic hone. I'm not sure if my technique improved greatly (I did make it a point to use less pressure than ever) or if this stuff is just that good, but this was more akin to gently dusting hair off my face with the gossamer feathers of an angel wing than shaving. It only took a single pass with some minor touch up on my neck to match my best 2 pass shave to date. And with almost no burning sensation upon splashing some rather unforgiving Captain's Choice North aftershave on.

This is not a forgiving edge, it is true. I could tell if I slipped up the edge wouldn't hesitate to flay me open. But the comfort level I would say rivals (my) coticule, provided that the user does not slip up.

I did not think I would ever like a pasted strop. But .25 CBN from Chef Knives to Go has won me over. With slightly better technique I could probably achieve a zero irritation shave with this. And that's saying something, because my skin is quite sensitive.

Dear friends;

Monday afternoon i received another package from Marty, my mentor. His handle is Euclid440. I wanted to run some test before my post. Here it is:

The package consist of .25 CBN in a paper strop that i have not used, and crox on a sailcloth strop. Yes, it is a synthetic canvas that constructed to fight off UV rays.

The protagonist of my experiment was a Thiers Issard Basic that i finished with a shapton 16k. It had quite a few micro chips in the edge. Could not be viewed with the naked eye, but when viewed through a 450X or 100X chemistry lab microscope (you know, the one you would buy for your kids) the chips are easy to see.

Note: anyone interested in honing should buy a microscope. Amazon sells some for less than 10 buck. This has helped me incredibly.

The strop has crox in one side as i said and some other compound in the other (dont remember the name). I did 30 laps on each side, then 150 in the .5 CBN, and 150 on the .125 CBN.

The chips were gone. As simple as that. Now the question was if TI's acier 135 -which is supposed to be pretty hard- had what it takes to hold the edge. Well, so far it did. After a three shave pass bbs the edge is chipless under the microscope.

The edge does not feel as sharp as my Geneva, nor as my Ralph Aust. Those two were honed by gssixguns and Lynn, respectively. Glenn used a shapton progression up to 30K. That makes a difference for sure. I dont know what Lynn used.

It did not feel as sharp, but was plenty sharp, dont get me wrong! The thing is that the shave was ultra smooth. In fact, smoother than my geneva and aust. Not that the others were not, mind you!

I will declare this experiment a success so far and will continue to report as the days of the week go by. What i am looking for is if the edge chips. If it doesnt, then that razor will stay in my rotation. If it does, we will see. We will have to figure out a way to treat her in a way consistent with her capacity. Then i will decide if she stays.

For the moment, hope is high!

Best regards,

Pepe Peña

P. D. I want to thank Euclid440 once again for his immense generosity and support. Marty, you are the best!


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