Thread: Stropping::: Very very very Important !!!!

Something I realized at the NC meet up this past weekend....
STROPPING is by far the weakest skill that new guys have that is SOOOooooooo important to a good shave.....

You really need to work on stropping skills, even if you use a dull butter-knife to practice with (I heard AFDavis /Alan use that line)
This is the one thing that really stood out to me, as the newer guys there stepped up to the strops, I am not only talking about brand new guys either....

This is probably the most important skill to acquire when starting out, honestly, we as honemiester's, can send you a shave-ready razor, and you can do all the proper prep, and shaving technique you can muster, but a few bad laps on the strop and it is all for naught....

Practice practice practice.... I swear your shaves will get much better and your edges will last much longer.....

As a guy who is getting ready to begin straight shaving, I appreciate the advice. Now to spend some time reading as much of this forum as I can.

As I was stropping a freshly honed razor last night I was thinking about this....

I believe I need to re-evaluate my stropping and improve on it.

I heartily agree, having recently had to relearn stropping myself. For over a year I stropped badly without realising I was undoing decent honing with bad stropping. I thought speed and a quick action was what was required.

My problem was using the wrist to turn the blade. I had to start from scratch, unlearn the bad habits, and strop very slowly using the 'volume knob' approach to turning the blade.

The biggest thing I noticed was that suddenly I could make a blade go from coticule failing HHT to HHT literally jumping off the edge just with stropping (no pastes!), which I believe Alan has written about before.

I have to say I learned the much harder way. Far better that I had listened properly first than to have to unlearn the lot and start again!

I believe that there are a couple of contributing factors to this. One is that stropping seems so easy to do. Another is that the volume of discussion of hones and honing vs the lesser level of discussion of strops and stropping reinforces this sense that honing is the Big Technique, while stropping is this chore you have to do. But I've come to believe that honing is a relatively minor skill and stropping is much more important to master, since if you master proper stropping you just won't need to hone very often unless you're into restoring old straight razors from ebay. So I guess I would say that honing is an important skill for restoration work, but not so much for shaving.

I'm a newer guy. I have about 50 shaves under my belt. My last three shaves have been my best. They were the following:

1. Henckels Friodur, near-full hollow, straight from SRD honing service (no stropping in between).

2. Boker Red Injun 101, last honed by RayG (I presume), and stropped by me on my RupRazor Filly.

3. DublDuck Satinedge (this morning), from the classifieds, came sharp, stropped by me on the Filly.


While I expect that my shaves will only continue to get better, can I assume that my stropping technique is satisfactory because of the fact that my razors come to the sink sharp as hell with no tugging, even on ATG passes?

Am I a natural?

Glen,

Wholeheartedly agreed. Do you find Razor stropping - Straight Razor Place Wiki an adequate representation of your information?

Regards,
Robin

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Something I realized at the NC meet up this past weekend....
STROPPING is by far the weakest skill that new guys have that is SOOOooooooo important to a good shave.....

You really need to work on stropping skills, even if you use a dull butter-knife to practice with (I heard AFDavis /Alan use that line)
This is the one thing that really stood out to me, as the newer guys there stepped up to the strops, I am not only talking about brand new guys either....

This is probably the most important skill to acquire when starting out, honestly, we as honemiester's, can send you a shave-ready razor, and you can do all the proper prep, and shaving technique you can muster, but a few bad laps on the strop and it is all for naught....

Practice practice practice.... I swear your shaves will get much better and your edges will last much longer.....

I agree. Stropping is.............important

Originally Posted by majurey

The biggest thing I noticed was that suddenly I could make a blade go from coticule failing HHT to HHT literally jumping off the edge just with stropping (no pastes!), which I believe Alan has written about before.

+1 on that. I have had the exact same experience. After I finish on my coticule I get satisfactory results with my hair tests, but they perform substantially better after a good stropping.

Stropping is one thing that I've spent hours practicing.....

It is important, but I didn't find it particularly hard to learn. But then again, I can say the same about honing.