I Blamed Everything for My Struggles Pt.2: All figured out

[duke762]

Yeah, used induced malfunction....big time. After 6 or 7 years of struggling along, I had never mastered stropping. My edges failed big time because I was not stropping aggressively enough to do much good. By using magnification, I could see the strop removing sparkles on my apex as I became more aggressive. I watched the same effect on the fabric component. I was able to clean up the edge and apex to a really nice condition after getting it together. The strop was keeping up with the wear and tear instead of being compounded over a couple of shaves leading to the edge failing badly.

The whole time I'm trying to figure this out, I'm thinking about a thread on stropping where I think it was Gamma said, "I've seen more under stropped razors than over stropped". The light flickered for a while but eventually came on.

 

[TheBeast]

Respect for owning your mistake and sharing, some people could never. Now others don't have to struggle with this. This Made me pay more attention to my strop and stropping and hopefully will make my learning journey smoother.

 

[duke762]

Man......I have made every mistake I could doing the straight razor thing. Others will struggle to meet my failures. It's amazing how many of them were user induced.

 

[Alex Jr]

Can you dive in a little bit more? What do you mean by not stropping aggressively enough? Laps or pressure? Or speed?

Thank you sir.

 

[duke762]

Well....Oh how I screw up, let me count the ways.... I was using restored, vintage shell strops which were refinished to a pretty high level. Not aggressive at all. I was using very light pressure on a very taut, non-aggressive, strop. I was not using the fabric component before the leather. The way I was stropping was of little or no use to my apex.

Two things made the light come on. I picked up a nice razor, and like new 3" strop, of unknown pedigree, and a truly crummy draw. Bought both in a package deal...cheap. I was going to give them both to a coworker that want to wet his toe in straights. I had to try it, I was totally unfamiliar with this type of leather. The draw was a challenge for me and I was forced to grip the razor tighter and bear down on it harder. Two things happened....the more aggressive surface forced me to add more pressure which in turn caused a little more droop in the strop. The aggressiveness of the strop combined with the droop, cleaned up my apex like you wouldn't believe.

The second thing that really helped me out was magnification. I had never paid attention to the apex while stropping, but it was an eye opener, to look under the scope and watch the apex progress. I then watched what an aggressive stopping on fabric could do. I've always have had a phobia about running my finely honed razor over anything that makes a "zoop" sound. Tony Miller called it, "A fast walker in corduroys". I'm cured now and feeling much better, thank you. The fabric, in its self, has a bit of abrasion to it and "zoop" doesn't hurt a thing...I'm starting to really like it in fact.

I believe Gamma said that he'd seen lot's of under stropped razor but no over stropped ones. This was going through my mind during my troubles but the light didn't come on. Being slow on the uptake causes me lots of user induced malfunctions.....

 

[Gamma]

Yes... stropping requires pressure.
There must be good contact on the hide, evenly, across the entire bevel/edge.
Friction is a necessary component, pressure is required.
Speed is irrelevant so far as edge quality goes.
Slack in the strop should be minimal unless the edge is very worn.

The never ending yammering about 'rolled edges' from the nanny squad paralyzes new users into thinking they are going to damage their new razor's edge if they don't strop with a limp wrist in a zero gravity environment.
This gets regurgitated endlessly because it's low-hanging fruit for people to inject into a thread so they can be part of the conversation. Rolled edges are not common, at all.

What happens is though, due to fear of a non-existent problem, is that those *****-footed edges never achieve max performance because the ineffective stropping doesn't bring the apex into 100% condition. So the blade doesn't cut right.

To get the full effect of stropping, to achieve maximum performance the hide is capable of, the blade must ride that leather and there must be more than just gravitational force pushing it into contact. If this is not done, then the stropping will be less effective or totally ineffective.
Marginal stropping will yield marginal effect.

I have never ever seen an 'over stropped' edge and I have put upwards of 5=600 laps on a blade.
I have intentionally rolled edges and 99.9% of the time they just strop out easily. It's actually pretty hard to roll an edge on leather and kill it that way. If the strop hasn't been gouged, the edge will most likely come around.

There is a need for some force in the equation to make the system to work correctly.
Of course it is possible to use too much force though, and this is where common sense, logic, reason, and practice come into play. Realize, in your mind's eye, what it is you are trying to achieve and work to that end. Instead of just 'thinking' you know what is going on, try to realize that it is more important to understand fully, and 'know' what is going on.