Thread: SRD's Felt Strop for Pasting Question?

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

I just sprayed the diamond on with the felt vertical and let it dry overnight. I don't think I've ever added any but I don't use it much. The chrome ox paste is fine. A little goes a long way. Here is an old tutorial by Josh Earl.

I read the thread; sadly, it pertained to pasting leather and linen strops, but narry a word about felt strops. Any other links?

What type of paste are you trying to put on the felt. Is it a powder, paste in a liquid or semi liquid state or a spray?

Originally Posted by JBHoren

I read the thread; sadly, it pertained to pasting leather and linen strops, but narry a word about felt strops. Any other links?

I did learn the following when pasting my strop with the crox tonight if it helps....

Don't draw x's and don't put scattered dabs of it. Whatll happen is some of it spreads, but most will soak in and you end up with areas of high concentration surrounded by a light green tint. What worked best for me on the crox was to put a small amount on my fingertip, basically just enough to say I have some on there, & very lightly draw ovals with the side of my finger instead of just rubbing with the pad where all my crox is sitting, so that it's only using a tiny bit of what's there. Makes the spread much more even. Doing that left a much more consistent spread with no heavy spots.

Originally Posted by Castel33

What type of paste are you trying to put on the felt. Is it a powder, paste in a liquid or semi liquid state or a spray?

The diamond was a spray, the crox was a sort of thick oil suspension. The stuff classicshaving.com sells under their own name.

I have some in liquid suspension, from several years back -- at that time I bought it to use on an 11" x 3" felt table hone. The results were like yours: A bumpy, uneven horror.

But I've also got a large container of CrO2 powder, and that is what I want to apply to my hanging felt strop. If I can rub it on/in in dry form, using my fingers, that would seem best; but I'm also curious about a spray application -- what's a good medium? water? oil? something else?

That I can't answer. My reasoning says water because it'll dry instead of penetrating into the felt, but I haven't tried it yet.

Edit, the dry may work if you could figure a way to dust it lightly/evenly onto the felt, maybe dusting it on in a cheesecloth back or something like that. Similar to how uchiko works on Japanese swords.

So here's what I ended up with. You can see where I tried dabbing small amounts at the top & then switched to the light ovals, which I think came out better. Do you guys think this will work or are the heavy spots likely to cause problems? Rubbing it with a rag/paper towel doesn't spread or pick it up any more, so it's pretty well in there. If it is likely to cause problems I'd rather buy another felt strop and a different crox source than end up causing more frequent honing. After all, this is meant to be a maintenance strop to extend my razors' useful lives between honings. The backside has .5 diamond spray, no photo of that because it looks just like a regular strop....

Also ignore the box of gauze sitting behind the strop. Those are not a part of my daily shaving routine!

As they're fond of saying in 12-Step programs, I've "participated in my own recovery"!

I put a heaping spoonful of Hand America CrO2 into an empty spice jar (with a shaker spout), then sprinkled some lightly-and-evenly over the surface of a felt-strop blank (on my kitchen counter, on top of some paper towel). Next, I spread it over the surface, using my fingertips. Not bad, for a jamoke like me. In retrospect, I should have used the spoon to further crush the CrO2 inside the shaker: Doing so would have given me a more uniform initial coverage, together with more of a powder to spread (rather than larger particles to both crush-and-spread), ensuring a better result. Next time, eh?

Using it as a "table strop/hone", it works quite nicely. I'll touch-up a straight razor I honed (and used) this past Monday, and see how much better it is, after hitting the CrO2-enabled felt.