Thread: Slower Stropping Stroke

Just Curious about this... In the Wiki about razor stropping it mentions that too slow of a stroke may cause problems (uneven pressure). Since I want to prefect the x-pattern, I have a 2.5 Inch strop, I want to go slow because I find that I sacrifice equal blade coverage if I go faster.

what are the disadvantages of using a stoke like this:

-Place razor at top of strop
-pause and think about the stroke
-accelerate
-decelerate
-pause briefly
-roll razor while repositioning

REPEAT

This one lap takes me about 3-4 seconds.... I find that if I concentrate hard enough The sound of each pass is about equal...

Should be a slightly less effective stropping method. I think in the beginning, slow and steady is a great way to go.

Once it is second nature you can speed up a little, and you'll get a little improvement.

Speed is good but not at the expense of quality.

Sounds good, but if you spend too much time contemplating with the edge contacting the strop, the odds of you pulling in the wrong direction ever so slightly and nicking your strop go up significantly.

I know this because I used to do the same thing with the waiting and thinking. It got me into trouble.

If you do your pause and think time with just the spine resting on the strop, you should be just fine, but it ends up being a little unnatural.

I think you are over analyzing it, but give it a try and see what happens, please be sure to give us the results, I am curious.

I just used common sense and followed the directions on Wiki and watched a few of the videos. I am a little slower than what I saw in the videos, but I know I am doing a good job as all my straights are very sharp.

Pabster

I will watch out for waiting too long at the ends of the strop... I am just thinking about trying it this way to avoid building bad habits by increasing speed while I am still learning. I will try to speed things up as I get more used to the motion and build more muscle memory.

Am on BlackBerry therefore brief.

The Wiki article has references to the original thread from which the Wiki passage was compiled. Read that thread, things may be a tad less simple than "slow is bad".

And as with all things that require repetitive movements at high speed (musical instruments, chopping vegetables, martial arts), being able to perform the movement at slow speed is the key to performing it with precision at high speeds. Boring, but a proven path to success. The butter knife method may actually be a viable alternative to trying this with a razor.

I was already stropping when I read the excerpt on stropping from the 1961 barber manual here. I loved the suggestion to flip the razor on the strop without doing the stroke. Learning to coordinate the flip with the thumb and forefinger without bending the wrist seemed such a good idea.

I stropped carefully at a moderate pace in the beginning. I can go quite fast now but I don't strop as fast as I could preferring what I feel is an effective speed. I can actually strop faster than I can count the laps but I think that is way faster than necessary or even desirable.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

I was already stropping when I read the excerpt on stropping from the 1961 barber manual here. I loved the suggestion to flip the razor on the strop without doing the stroke. Learning to coordinate the flip with the thumb and forefinger without bending the wrist seemed such a good idea.

This is what really seemed to "fix" my stropping and get rid of the occasional and painful strop nics for me.

Using my wrist, i had a problem of occasionally "smacking" the razor down on the strop.

That barber manual is GOLD!!!

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

I was already stropping when I read the excerpt on stropping from the 1961 barber manual here. I loved the suggestion to flip the razor on the strop without doing the stroke. Learning to coordinate the flip with the thumb and forefinger without bending the wrist seemed such a good idea.

I stropped carefully at a moderate pace in the beginning. I can go quite fast now but I don't strop as fast as I could preferring what I feel is an effective speed. I can actually strop faster than I can count the laps but I think that is way faster than necessary or even desirable.

...well, now i'm good and confused about honing
how does allowing the blade to lead on a honing stroke sharpen it?