Welcome to the Industrial Age!
Well, heck, I just ruined things.
Was time to lap and paste the balsa strops.
Was distracted and crossed over the .5u and .25u, putting the wrong paste on the wrong balsa. Talk about cross contamination.
Now have to toss the balsa and start from scratch.
At least my .1u is good.
So I have an 8 razor rotation , I currently use my .1u balsa on them every Sunday. When do you guys switch over to using all three balsa ? When your razor starts tugging or pulling ? Is it good to use the .25u then the .1u every now and again? Maybe every other week?
Thanks,
Glad to read about balsa in such a well written way.YMMV on the fabric components. I dont see much point but others love them. I just follow with THIN flexible unsupported UNPASTED balsa sheet, then hanging leather. Do it like you feel it, cause it's your razor, but I myself skip the whole linen/canvas/seatbelt/denim/hypercloth part. I have in the past seen cloth components to even slightly degrade an edge, and rather than snipe hunt for the perfect holy grail of linen or linen substitute, I simply eliminated it from my routine. So, perhaps there is room for you to experiment.
BTW I have shaved right off the unpasted balsa strop, with good results, skipping the leather. Not bad. Jury is still out, but at present the hanging leather is my final edge prep step.
Not really so practical for wedges. Wedge razors are usually taped and most often they get still another layer of tape for the final finish laps. When stropping on a semi rigid flat surface loaded with an abrasive, you really want the edge to be in contact with it. So to do that, you would tape the razor for the balsa. However, that loads the balsa with residue from the tape and is a PITA to do after every shave.Can The Method be used for any type of grind, ie wedge?