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Any experience stropping to resharpen safety razors?

Hi forum (first post)

So i watched a great video wheres there's a guy stropping a cartridge razor across denim (or in the video his arm). This was to straighten and clean the blade, allowing him to re-use the razor for up to 6 months! Another video a guy did a similar thing showing with a microscope how it does really clean up and a-line (sorry hows that spelt) the blades.

Has anyone tried a similar thing with a safety razor? I have a few times and it does seem to work.

My question is that this is with a 10 pound Chinese safety razor from a market, and I was wondering if anyone had any experience cleaning the blades of a safety razor with maybe a more expensive handle and different blades (mine are gillette).

Thank you for you time and I look forward to any responses you may have.

On an aside this has made me wonder about straight razors as they can certainly be re-sharpened/re-used.

Thank you.
 
I have no experience with safety razors but decades with straight razors.

From all that I've read and all the SEM images I've seen there is usually very little re-aligning going on with a razor through stropping. There is definitely some when it's needed and a strop will definitely realign an edge to a degree but the causes of an edge needing to be realigned are supposedly few.

Much of the work of others conclude that stropping removes corrosion mostly, which is the main cause of edge degradation. Whiskers, even though they can have the same tensile strength of copper wire of the same diameter when dry are not nearly hard enough when wet to deform steel which is much harder. Edge deformity, which needs realigning, is often caused by other factors such as dinging an edge on something like a basin or dropping the razor. There's probably more circumstances but I can't recall them all but you probably get the picture.

Turns out water and lather are the real enemies as they degrade and corrode the steel. Stropping mitigates this by removing corrosion and adding a coating (from leather) to help protect the edge from further corrosion. It ain't perfect though as eventually every edge corrodes to the point of needing to be honed or tossed in the case of cartridges.

Though I don't know how one might successfully strop a DE I imagine the effect might be similar. For cartridges I can't imagine it would do so nearly as much since only one side of the blade is exposed to the strop.

I fully admit I may be wrong due to my ignorance on the subject of safety razors and cartridges but hopefully someone with experience will chime in and give their thoughts. I'd like to know myself.

Chris
 
It’s hard to believe a DE blade could be made to effectively cut hair for 181 (six months worth) shaves. But if you remove and let a blade dry you should be able to squeeze some more life out of it.
 
My father has an Allegro sharpener for DE razor blades and one side has a strop as well. He offered to give me the sharpener since he uses cartridge only these days but I declined. I have so many blades that I don't need to sharpen or strop them.
But there has to be some truth to the matter, considering that such devices exist.
 

ajkel64

Check Out Chick
Staff member
I have palm stropped some DE blades in the past. I found that some blades it did seem to help last a little longer and other blades it made no difference whatsoever. So from my little test it depends on the blade and to be honest I stopped doing it as I have so many blades that it does not matter.
 
Stropping disposable blades removes the coating that makes them cut efficiently. The edge will remain sharp for ages on its own, but it doesn't cut nearly as well without the coating.

All stropping I've done rendered blades useless immediately.
 
Stropping disposable blades removes the coating that makes them cut efficiently. The edge will remain sharp for ages on its own, but it doesn't cut nearly as well without the coating.

All stropping I've done rendered blades useless immediately.

We have a winner. 😊
 
Stropping isn't about sharpening, as I understand, that's what honing does. I use vintage blades exclusively and in the beginning, out of caution, I would strop them before their first use on a pair of jean's because I heard arguments for and against and I thought what would it hurt? But after quite awhile I found it doesn't make a difference one way or the other so no more.
 
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Stropping disposable blades removes the coating that makes them cut efficiently. The edge will remain sharp for ages on its own, but it doesn't cut nearly as well without the coating.

All stropping I've done rendered blades useless immediately.

There are a few blades I intentionally want to remove the coating quickly so I either palm strop them or cork them ( I'm looking at you Voskhods ). This is a YMMV thing for some people on specific blades.
 
There are a few blades I intentionally want to remove the coating quickly so I either palm strop them or cork them ( I'm looking at you Voskhods ). This is a YMMV thing for some people on specific blades.

Stropping on a bit of denim should do the job. Cardboard for the stubborn ones.
 
I have a glass stropper for DE blades. I've tried it a few times, but haven't noticed any difference. It's decorative now.
 
I live by the school of thought that stropping a DE razor makes no difference. In fact, many of the better blades clearly say “do not wipe” on the wrapper.

What is important, however, is rinsing and then making sure the blade is dry for storage.
 
Stropping removes the blade coating which is what imparts smoothness. The edge sharpness is not that important in the grand scheme of things. The edge hardening process is.
 
Stropping disposable blades removes the coating that makes them cut efficiently. The edge will remain sharp for ages on its own, but it doesn't cut nearly as well without the coating.

All stropping I've done rendered blades useless immediately.

Most studies I have seen referenced show that the coating is removed on the first shave by shaving alone.

Chris
 
The overspill coating is removed from the cutting edge on the first shave but the coating on the bevels remains for many shaves.
 
I wouldn't even bother, since DE blades are so inexpensive. I can purchase 300 blades for the same price as I did for 16 cartridges.

Sent from my LG-US996 using Tapatalk
 
Most studies I have seen referenced show that the coating is removed on the first shave by shaving alone.

Chris

Never seen such a study yet, feel free to link us up.

I believe the tip of the edge loses coating on first shave, but the full edge takes as much as 7 shaves on most faces (according to the How razor blades are made video).

In my case about 3 shaves before I feel the blade starts pulling hair and being harsh.
 
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