Thread: Dovo black paste, about duration

I've read around here that Dovo black is made of graphite, and someone implied that it has a shorter life on the strop compared to other pastes. If you use dovo black paste, could you please give me some guidelines?

I'm thinking of applying it to one of my strops, but if i need to re-apply it frequently i might consider some balsa.

I have used Dovo Red and Dovo Black and have never noticed a shorter life span....In fact I would say the opposite

The Dovo pastes are a much more milder cutter then the other pastes out there...
They work exceptionally on the older Sheffield blades...

Hey Porue

I use Dovo green, red, and black to actually hone my W Greaves razor and it is all I use on it and it works very well. I apllied the paste a couple of months ago and have been useing them to hone the W Greaves and touching up other razors. The black gets the most use of any of them and still haven't had to add more on to the strop. As to your other thread about trying to mix the red and green together I would not try that it would be a waste of both paste as you would still always have to treat that side of your strop as DOVO green because it will have the higher microns embedded in the leather. If you are really desperate to try and save that side of the strop you could try to clean the leather useing saddle soap very very very throughly. Probally you would have to clean it let it dry and then do it again and then again and even then you might not get rid of all of the green. Which could get very frustrating if you are new to honing and are trying to use the red to finish up your blade.

Joe

porue,

+1 on Glen & Joes comments.

Personally, I have found that these pastes (red & black) do a very good job with older, softer steel blades (like some of the Sheffields).

Like Glen & Joe, I have not noticed any 'shortage' of life of the black paste - I have it applied on a loom strop, red one side, black the other.

The red & black Dovo pastes seem to have a less than stellar reputation here at SRP, but I have found them to do a very good job, particularly on the afore-mentioned blades

If you would like to experiment, you could try applying these pastes to a balsa paddle, and see if you like the result.

There is always something new to try and experiment with; that is one of the attractions of straight razor shaving for me;

Have fun !

Best regards

Russ

Thank for your replies. The question is based on something i read about using a pencil to scrabble on a paddle (or was it cloth?) and then stropping on it and thank to the the graphite to achieve black-Dovo-like results, and then thrash it since the stropping destroyed the graphite.