Linen Replacement?

I may have found a cheap replacement for the linen side of my strop. Actually I think it works much better than the linen side of my strop. Today I placed an ordinary towel over my flattened hand and stropped on that using some pressure. I stropped mostly on my fingers. I did 30 laps (its only 3 inches long afterall).

The edge became very shiny, as it is after I hone it, and the razor seemed to get sharper. I was very surprised at how sharp it seemed to get. I tried several other razors and they all seemed to get sharper, so much sharper that I had to really consider whether I needed to strop on leather or not.

When I did strop on leather; I had to strop very, very lightly.

Try it if you'd like . . . and yes, I might just be crazy, not sure yet.

I'll try it...

Long time ago Jim told me the best stropping is on the inner thigh of a young lady.... or was that the best stroking, I'm never sure.

Sorry for the brief detour, was that a flat towel, or the one with the loops, I'll try both when I feel adventurous.

BTW you're almost getting to that Livi method on his palm, watch out if you start speaking italian :)

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Originally Posted by gugi

Long time ago Jim told me the best stropping is on the inner thigh of a young lady.... or was that the best stroking, I'm never sure.

Sorry for the brief detour, was that a flat towel, or the one with the loops, I'll try both when I feel adventurous.

BTW you're almost getting to that Livi method on his palm, watch out if you start speaking italian :)

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I do the palm stropping when honing. Don't have to worry about me speaking Italian though; I'm still working on English:fim:

Tried it and it most definitely does the trick.

Thanx Mark,

I'll toss it in my bag of tricks, particularly for travel shaving.

Years ago Josh Earl and I compared notes and for both of us stropping the razor on a towel to remove lather was a major edge-killer for us; we had independently done this to reduce the risk of dinging the edge and had eventually gone back to basin swishing with major improvements in the edge retention. This was before I was into stropping so we're talking 6 days vs 10 or so. Not sure why stropping on a towel held in the hand would be different from a towel laying on the counter :confused:

Interesting. Let me ask an inverse question. Why would stropping on a towel be different than stropping on linen?

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Originally Posted by AFDavis11

I may have found a cheap replacement for the linen side of my strop. Actually I think it works much better than the linen side of my strop. Today I placed an ordinary towel over my flattened hand and stropped on that using some pressure. I stropped mostly on my fingers. I did 30 laps (its only 3 inches long afterall).

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Interesting. What kind of towel? Flat kitchen towel? Fluffy bathroom towel?

Hmm I'll have to give this a try. you're not using a linen towel are you? ha ha.

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Originally Posted by AFDavis11

Interesting. Let me ask an inverse question. Why would stropping on a towel be different than stropping on linen?

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Softer material, lots of "sag" in the pile. Cotton produces a sharper edge than linen IMO but it's also slower thus requiring more laps, though the "sag" from the pile of the towel will speed it up the same way sag speeds up a linen strop.