Thread: Scratches left from strop

I have a brand new black latigo strop leaving scratches on my bevels. Strop came from SRD. Looks really clean, went over it with a loupe couldn’t see any contaminants. I’ve only ever rubbed it with my palm and cleaned it once with some lather to try and get some of the dye and wax off as it leaves enough residue on a blade I feel the need to wipe it off. The picture is after 20 laps, the keys are there to give perspective


I’m not blaming SRD, and don’t think the residue has anything to do with it. I have another latigo from them in brown and it performs fine, actually the reason I bought the black one. The only other thing that the blade contacts besides the leather is my face and I can’t imagine I started growing steel whiskers.

Through a search of the site the first thing I’m thinking about trying is rubbing the strop down with pure glycerin to try and give it a gentle cleaning before moving to more drastic measures if it doesn’t work. I’m hoping some of you strop gurus can chime in with some ideas.

How deep are the scratches ? Are they damaging the edge ? If not it's just cosmetic. If you hone with Jants & then strop you will see all sorts of scratches on the bevels afterwards.
Normal AFAIK.

Deep enough to effect the shave. I hone on naniwa ss. The scratches aren’t there after the hones. The first shave is stellar, the second a little less and so on. I guess I could address my technique but I haven’t run into this problem before. I’ll try going back to the 8k then to the 12k. The scratches appear to be around 5k-8k in size and a couple result in tiny chips and I think that’s what is effecting the shave. One razor would be one thing and I’d write off as a fluke but it’s happened to 3 so far. I keep hoping I’ll spot whatever it is embedded in the strop but as far as I can tell there’s nothing there.

Are these restored razors by any chance ? Rust from micro pitting etc will do what you describe.

You bring up a good point. Yes all restored. I’ve set the bevels twice for all, it’s my general practice with anything that’s had rust on it or restoration unless I see pitting that may effect the integrity of the edge, then I’ll just keep honing until I’m through it, kill the edge and then set again. That being said I have passed a razor over that strop that I had only cleaned the rust off the spine with a single edge razor, then rubbed it down with a slightly oiled rag to get the particles off that had loosened up. I wonder, they’re may have been some loose crud on there still and then contaminated the strop. This would make sense, I did not have any problems at first with the strop, seems like it started a week ago. I’ve had the strop for at least two weeks now. I would expect to see something on the surface though. If I run my hand over it it feels perfectly smooth. I’m stumped.

Given the size of those 2 sample scratches shown in the first photo, I'm not surprised at edge chipping regardless of the razor's condition. What baffles me is not being able to feel and/or see the culprit given that it's severe enough to cause micro-chipping.

Be sure to check the very edges of the strop considering an X-pattern stroke brings the heel and toe of a razor on/off the edges repeatedly.

Flummoxed here, John, sorry. I enjoy a challenging problem, so I will keep scratching my head.

Originally Posted by onimaru55

Are these restored razors by any chance ? Rust from micro pitting etc will do what you describe.

My thoughts as well.
Rub a cotton ball over the strop, see if it catches on anything.

If your gonna clean it, use saddle soap instead of Glycerin.

Thanks guys. Just honed up 3 blades. I’m going to go through my strops and see who’s exactly the culprit. I have crox hanging strop but haven’t seen any errant scratches coming off of that which is why I’m assuming the new 3” black latigo is the culprit. I’ll report back my findings and I’ll track down some saddle soap.

I read on another thread that there’s two different kinds of saddle soap. One had wax in it apparently, so I assume get the one without, given there’s any truth to that?

I would do the same, but I've only seen one kind.

Think I figured it out last night. After honing 3 blades I went to each of parts of my stropping progression to nail down exactly where and what was going on. So first blade went to the pastedhanging strop. Edge looked good after the customary 6-7 laps. Next blade went to the poly hang strop for 20 laps. Again, no problems. The last blade went straight to leather, the black latigo in question, 100 laps, once again all is well. Now I’m like wtf, totally at a loss. I really took my time, made sure that I was getting all the way across the strops just make sure if there is anything to scratch a bevel that I would hit it. After a few minutes it dawned on me, just do the whole progression and see what happens. So I did that one blade at a time. Everything looked fine. You have got to be kidding me. I haven’t cleaned anything besides doing a palm rub on the poly and leather. Another five minutes of mulling it over. Then it dawns on me, I’ve been using a 2” strop since the beginning, it’s also slightly crowned in the middle, I need a fairly exaggerated X stroke to get the whole blade on a 2” as compared to the 3”. The 3” is fairly flat if anything has a cup to it, center lower that the edges, which I’ve been trying to correct. So using my normal technique on the 3” cause me to run the edge of the blade on the edge of the strop as I’m x striking up and down this thing. The edge of the strop isnt beveled. This would explain, at least as far as I can discern atm, the weird chipping I’ve been seeing on multiple edges. I can see the larger scratches on the bevel much better after the crox stropping then as I run the bevel off the edge of the leather the weakened area at the scratch chips out.

So long story longer, it would appear to be my technique which is the culprit. Paying more attention to what I was doing kept my edge from coming in contact with the edge of the slightly cupped strop, as far as I can tell.

So next question, how do I bevel the edge of a strop?

Thanks all for your input, I’ll update if it turns out I’m wrong about my conclusions thus far.