Thread: HONNING AND STROPPING.

Hi all,

I remember that spanish barber used to stropp the blades in a loop strop with red paste one side and black one on the other. One of them once tell me that they didn't need to honning the blades beacuse it was not necessary when using pasted stropps. Is it true at all?

Pasted strops are used to refresh your edge when the razor starts to tug. You shouldn't use the pasted strop after each use. Your regular strop will be good enough. No, a pasted strop doesn't replace a hone. Eventually your razor will need to honed. That will likely be a barbers hone or equivalent. Unless you have damaged your edge (like banging it against the faucet), you won't need to set a new bevel for a very, very long time.

A lot of factors go into how often you need to use a pasted strop or hone. Your beard, face, technique, and the razor itself all figure into that time period. Only experience will let you know when to use your pasted strop, or go back to the hone.

Originally Posted by fjbg2009

Hi all,

I remember that spanish barber used to stropp the blades in a loop strop with red paste one side and black one on the other. One of them once tell me that they didn't need to honning the blades beacuse it was not necessary when using pasted stropps. Is it true at all?

Yes it's true.

Originally Posted by mparker762

Yes it's true.

Not arguing the point as you know more about it than I do but..... wouldn't continually refreshing the edge on paste eventually thin out and weaken the edge ? I'm thinking that honing on stones gives me better control over how I leave my edges from the standpoint of the integrity of the bevel ?

Isn't a pasted strap in essence a leather hone?

So constantly resharpening the edge may lead to an edge roll or too fine of an edge to be comfortable.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Not arguing the point as you know more about it than I do but..... wouldn't continually refreshing the edge on paste eventually thin out and weaken the edge ? I'm thinking that honing on stones gives me better control over how I leave my edges from the standpoint of the integrity of the bevel ?

It could be that it is the shaving that thins out and weakens the edge while the pasted strop helps reform it

The theory is arguable but it is hard to discount the positive experience of barbers with decades' worth of satisfied customers. I've only been shaving with a straight razor for about a year, so I haven't been able to verify for myself whether I need any hones at all, but there sure are a lot of old "barber hones" out there, eh

I am no expert, but have been told by someone who is that for best results a paddle strop should be used for pastes as it will be less likely to round the edge. Hanging strops are too flexible for proper honing and a pasted strop is a form of honing.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Not arguing the point as you know more about it than I do but..... wouldn't continually refreshing the edge on paste eventually thin out and weaken the edge ? I'm thinking that honing on stones gives me better control over how I leave my edges from the standpoint of the integrity of the bevel ?

I used to think so. AFAIK I'm one of the guys that started this idea that pastes weaken the edge, and if you look back in the archives I came up with a variety of elaborate theories to explain this. But I've since reevaluated that theory in light of some experimentation and no longer believe it's valid. Sometime back around the time of the "Grand Chronik Review" I took a couple of old razors and did hundreds of laps with them on a variety of pastes (diamond, Dovo Black, and chrome oxide) and substrates (leather-on-wood, bare wood, vellum-on-wood, and hanging linen and leather) and never really demonstrated to my satisfaction that high levels of pasted stropping actually degraded the edge. What I did find was that too much paste was bad, and too much pressure was bad, and on a pasted hanger too much slack was bad. But I never did find that hundreds or even thousands of laps on pasted strops were bad. One of the razors I sent out in the Chronik Review had over five hundred laps on chrome oxide on a hanging strop, and if the recipient noticed any problems he didn't deem it worth mentioning. My 7/8 W&B Concave grind had close to 800 laps on a variety of pastes, finishing up on the Dovo Black paste, and the only lasting effect was that it's too sharp to shave with comfortably.

The only link I really found between pasted stropping and edge deterioration was that as the paste loads up with swarf then the draw tends to increase, which tends to cause you to increase pressure, which then which harms the edge. But this is an effect that occurs with unpasted strops as well (I can't stand high-draw strops like latigo for this reason). But absent that, I found that I could strop an edge on paste for many hundreds of laps and the edge remained sharp as ever. Using a non-compressible substrate like bare hardwood or vellum-on-tile makes this much more clear, since they're more resistant to pressure (with a full hollow, increasing pressure flexes the blade more than the substrate, which actually lifts the edge away from the paste)

The pasted hangers and even to some extent the leather-covered paddles all tended to cause some degree of arching in the bevels, but as long as you used consistent tension and consistent (and very light) pressure on the razor, this doesn't really cause any problems. If you think about it a slightly arched bevel is similar to a double or triple bevel - only continuous instead of stepwise. The problem comes in with a very heavily arched bevel which makes the final angle at the edge too steep. The knife sharpening guys have been doing the multi-bevel thing for years and from what I've read believe the multi-bevel edge is inferior to the smoothly arched edge, and the only reason to use a multi-bevel edge is because of the difficulty of achieving this on a knife without a continuous slack belt sharpening system.

Originally Posted by mparker762

I used to think so. AFAIK I'm one of the guys that started this idea that pastes weaken the edge, and if you look back in the archives I came up with a variety of elaborate theories to explain this. But I've since reevaluated that theory in light of some experimentation and no longer believe it's valid. Sometime back around the time of the "Grand Chronik Review" I took a couple of old razors and did hundreds of laps with them on a variety of pastes (diamond, Dovo Black, and chrome oxide) and substrates (leather-on-wood, bare wood, vellum-on-wood, and hanging linen and leather) and never really demonstrated to my satisfaction that high levels of pasted stropping actually degraded the edge. What I did find was that too much paste was bad, and too much pressure was bad, and on a pasted hanger too much slack was bad. But I never did find that hundreds or even thousands of laps on pasted strops were bad. One of the razors I sent out in the Chronik Review had over five hundred laps on chrome oxide on a hanging strop, and if the recipient noticed any problems he didn't deem it worth mentioning. My 7/8 W&B Concave grind had close to 800 laps on a variety of pastes, finishing up on the Dovo Black paste, and the only lasting effect was that it's too sharp to shave with comfortably.

The only link I really found between pasted stropping and edge deterioration was that as the paste loads up with swarf then the draw tends to increase, which tends to cause you to increase pressure, which then which harms the edge. But this is an effect that occurs with unpasted strops as well (I can't stand high-draw strops like latigo for this reason). But absent that, I found that I could strop an edge on paste for many hundreds of laps and the edge remained sharp as ever. Using a non-compressible substrate like bare hardwood or vellum-on-tile makes this much more clear, since they're more resistant to pressure (with a full hollow, increasing pressure flexes the blade more than the substrate, which actually lifts the edge away from the paste)

The pasted hangers and even to some extent the leather-covered paddles all tended to cause some degree of arching in the bevels, but as long as you used consistent tension and consistent (and very light) pressure on the razor, this doesn't really cause any problems. If you think about it a slightly arched bevel is similar to a double or triple bevel - only continuous instead of stepwise. The problem comes in with a very heavily arched bevel which makes the final angle at the edge too steep. The knife sharpening guys have been doing the multi-bevel thing for years and from what I've read believe the multi-bevel edge is inferior to the smoothly arched edge, and the only reason to use a multi-bevel edge is because of the difficulty of achieving this on a knife without a continuous slack belt sharpening system.

Thanks so much for your interesting reply. That is the most valid explanation ever read about the matter.

Originally Posted by mparker762

I used to think so. AFAIK I'm one of the guys that started this idea that pastes weaken the edge, and if you look back in the archives I came up with a variety of elaborate theories to explain this. But I've since reevaluated that theory in light of some experimentation and no longer believe it's valid. Sometime back around the time of the "Grand Chronik Review" I took a couple of old razors and did hundreds of laps with them on a variety of pastes (diamond, Dovo Black, and chrome oxide) and substrates (leather-on-wood, bare wood, vellum-on-wood, and hanging linen and leather) and never really demonstrated to my satisfaction that high levels of pasted stropping actually degraded the edge. What I did find was that too much paste was bad, and too much pressure was bad, and on a pasted hanger too much slack was bad. But I never did find that hundreds or even thousands of laps on pasted strops were bad. One of the razors I sent out in the Chronik Review had over five hundred laps on chrome oxide on a hanging strop, and if the recipient noticed any problems he didn't deem it worth mentioning. My 7/8 W&B Concave grind had close to 800 laps on a variety of pastes, finishing up on the Dovo Black paste, and the only lasting effect was that it's too sharp to shave with comfortably.

The only link I really found between pasted stropping and edge deterioration was that as the paste loads up with swarf then the draw tends to increase, which tends to cause you to increase pressure, which then which harms the edge. But this is an effect that occurs with unpasted strops as well (I can't stand high-draw strops like latigo for this reason). But absent that, I found that I could strop an edge on paste for many hundreds of laps and the edge remained sharp as ever. Using a non-compressible substrate like bare hardwood or vellum-on-tile makes this much more clear, since they're more resistant to pressure (with a full hollow, increasing pressure flexes the blade more than the substrate, which actually lifts the edge away from the paste)

The pasted hangers and even to some extent the leather-covered paddles all tended to cause some degree of arching in the bevels, but as long as you used consistent tension and consistent (and very light) pressure on the razor, this doesn't really cause any problems. If you think about it a slightly arched bevel is similar to a double or triple bevel - only continuous instead of stepwise. The problem comes in with a very heavily arched bevel which makes the final angle at the edge too steep. The knife sharpening guys have been doing the multi-bevel thing for years and from what I've read believe the multi-bevel edge is inferior to the smoothly arched edge, and the only reason to use a multi-bevel edge is because of the difficulty of achieving this on a knife without a continuous slack belt sharpening system.

Can you explain what you mean when you refer to "harm" to the edge that a paste may or may not cause? Do you mean a wire edge? I can produce wire edges which are evident when viewed under incandescent light with the unaided eye from using diamond pastes and chrome ox under certain conditions (depends on the razor/steel, etc). Such an edge can be wickedly sharp but can crap out mid-shave and be visibly ragged after the shave when viewed under magnification. Drawing that edge over the corner of a balsa strop will most often remove that burr but I brought this up because I have and can create a burr using pastes. Typically I find burrs/wire edges can be created using hanging canvas strops with 1 mic and .5 mic diamond sprays. I agree with you on the overpasting being bad since chrome ox has on occasion produced wire edges for me only when I've overpasted on balsa. Concentration seems to be key here as I performed an experiment last year using a small amount of dry chrome ox powder on newspaper over a lapped Chinese 12k hone TRYING to create a wire edge. After 100 passes each day for 7 days and 700 total passes with no wire edge, I was satisfied that the method and/or concentration of chrome ox did not create a burr.

Chris L