Hello everyone. I am quite new to straight razors, honing and stropping them, however I made a small discovery today that I wanted to share it with you. As I said, I am new to this, so people might have had same observations before me, and, please, ignore this post if you find nothing new in it.

Anyways, I was honing my Dovo Prima Klang on a Coticule today and, when finished, took it to the strop to do the regular post-coti 50 polyweb / 80 leather laps. Before hitting the strop I noticed some staining on the blade left by the tape I used when honing. I figured it was glue which needed some hot water and a little soap to be removed. It worked in fact and the stains were removed with very hot water and 2-3 minutes of rubbing. In the process I heated up the razor quite significantly. And there it came to me...

but first my understanding of how stropping works:

despite the lack of sufficient scientific research, which would clearly demonstrate what stropping does to the edge, I always thought that it simply realigns the edge, without removing any steel from it. This should be much easier with warmer steel as it becomes more elastic.

so... warming up the strop with the palm of the hand helps, and the razor by itself warms up in the very process of stropping. But what if we take it one step forward by actually heating up the blade? One more deduction: the blade needs to be cooled down right after stropping, as flexible steel might develop micro-bents in tension points by itself, without actually touching anything (this last one was suggested by a friend of mine, 40 year steel-working veteran)

I am planning to repeat my experiment with a glass of close-to-boiling water and another one with near freezing water.

Let me know if this makes sense))
Thank you.