Thread: Chromium Oxide Confusion

With any paste you don't want to put much on the strop be it balsa or leather or another other material. You are right that if you put to much on when you go to use it you will scrap of the excess but that happens pretty much with however much you use cause some of the paste always seems to not get embedded in the leather or wood.

Now the main reason you don't want to have the pool table look to your pasted strop is that it will not cut well thus it will not sharpen the razor well. When you paste a strop you are embedding micro particles into the strop that when you use a stropping motion on it you force those embedded particle slightly above the level of the leather or wood and they then cut metal away from the edge of your razor sharpening the razor. When you have very little paste on the strop the metal will come off the blade and be pushed into gaps in between the particles and then shed from the strop leaving the embedded particles clear and able to cut more metal. If you have the pool table look those metal shaving quickly fill any gaps in the embedded particals and are not able to be shed from the strop. You end up with a smooth surface that the blade will glide over without being cut. If you really over paste a strop you won't even get the blade to cut at all.

In short the particles in the paste need room to do their job.