Is pasted stropping 'stropping' or 'finishing'?

[Jayboz]

It can be both, years ago on another forum several of us stropped the same razor daily on pure chromium oxide to see when the edge would fail.

It did not, after a week or so all the stria was polished off the bevel and the edge keenness plateaued to a smooth keen shaving edge. After a year nothing changed and many experimenters got boarded and quit the experiment early.

I have a razor candidate that i wanted to try out with the daily Crox on a hanging sailcloth strop. Approximately how many laps after each shave were you doing?

 

[H Brad Boonshaft]

It was years ago, but I think about 50, with light pressure.

Sailcloth is a great substrate for a pasted strop. My Chrome Oxide shop pasted strop is 3-inch Sailcloth and is use to strop between fine hones and nagura when honing.

 

[SliceOfLife]

after the pasted strop, and not the same shave at all. Does that mean that it was not as good?

Depends on the stone, depends on the paste. In general I prefer the stones I use over the pastes I've used. Point is it's different. Chromox .50 was the paste most everyone used 15 years ago... very very distinct feel to those edges; and the stone before it was almost irrelevant. Seem to remember some guys doing tests to figure out how many chromox stropping passes it took to get to a "chromox finish" off a 1k beveling stone... and it wasn't a ton... and their criteria was an edge that felt like a "chromox edge". Because that's as much a thing as a Thuri edge, or a Naniwa SS 12k edge.

Meanwhile; clean stropping, you feel the edge of the stone you hit before it in the shave. I've heard guys say TI white is basically the same as chromox... a very distinct feel; can't comment on that myself; but the point stands... it defines the edge... stropping without a paste just takes any shave-quality stone finished edge and makes it shave ready. Pasted stropping eradicates the stone edge and replaces it with a pasted edge... generally even faster and more severely than going to another stone would have.

 

[Empire straights]

Well, I never said these people don't exist. I am all too well aware that they did exist and they do still exist but they were and still are wrong. I've butted heads with them too many times to count. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. Even so, I can't imagine thinking that way or engaging in semantics like that without having an ulterior motive. It's almost as if someone was trying to make the Norton 8k out to look like it was better than it ever could be for financial reasons or something along those lines.

Yah, if I strop on diamond paste for 250 laps on linen or whatever I will pretty much wipe out everything done before it. I've actually done this and it hurt. Forgetting that I'll never do that again, it wasn't what I was describing.
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What I was talking about was that an Escher after a Coti is not the same thing as an Escher after a pure synth origin. Maybe if I spend 72 hours honing on the Escher the Coti work will be gone, maybe not. Whatever, it isn't going to happen. Yeah, I can sandblast an edge to remove convexity from a Coticule - sure, also not going to happen. For the larger part of the universe, a typical finishing process on an Escher is not going to remove a Coti fingerprint entirely. I don't see this needing to be identified by a hyper-attentive user. Maybe, if anything, all of this will be clearer to someone who actually does these comparisons regularly. Hypothetical theory only goes so far. And sure, the majority of people won't be doing heavy A/B testing. Without a good number of A/B test comparisons in hand, it's more like guessing than knowing. To me, the differences are plain as day. To me, going Coti to Escher is a Coti-Escher edge, not an Escher Edge. But that's not meant as a scientific analysis. And I might refer to it as an Escher edge, which I also don't mean to be a scientific analysis.
So I see my Crox after Coti edge being a Crox edge and I also know it will be different than my synth-Crox edge.
No one needs to agree with that, I'm just calling it how I see it.

I know very little about synthetic stones, but I notice the difference between coticule>hard vs different coticule>hard ark. Once you start throwing different stone combinations together it becomes apparent unless you put in serious time like you said, the edges are a sum of their parts and the different step can be obvious in the feel and preforms of the edge.

 

[Empire straights]

It was years ago, but I think about 50, with light pressure.

Sailcloth is a great substrate for a pasted strop. My Chrome Oxide shop pasted strop is 3-inch Sailcloth and is use to strop between fine hones and nagura when honing.

I've only ever used heavily brushed sued as a substrate on paddles I've made, but I always felt like my titanium white was much coarser than my Crox. I tore of the white side of the paddle. The Crox doesn't change the edge too quickly but if given some time it will. I do about 7 laps to knock off rough spots if I use it(mostly knives). Crox give a smooth shave but I'd rather shave after palm stropping 25 laps straight off the stone.

 

[marv]

There are many different grades of chromium oxide on the market. It doesn't make much sense to generalize. (imo) Puma's green and Dialux's green etc. are also called chromoxide. (By users, not by manufacturers.) All of these have different micron levels, so are their abrasiveness. I use pure powder ones. It's about 0.5 micron. And they work pretty fast. I don't like the chromoxide edge in the final finish. If i use; i use more like a prefinisher. And I avoid going too many laps. 5-10 strokes on the crox-strop and then I move on to the final stone and make the final finish with natural stone.

 

[Gamma]

Speaking for myself, I'm not generalizing about the exact finish Chromox leaves, I'm, talking about the presence of the effect a pasted strop puts on an edge following different stones. Regardless of whether I use .5 micron Hand American Chromox, or another brand with a different particle size and shape, there is still a felt impact on the edge that disqualifies the process from being stropping' in the conventional sense.

 

[papi]

Depends on the stone, depends on the paste. In general I prefer the stones I use over the pastes I've used. Point is it's different. Chromox .50 was the paste most everyone used 15 years ago... very very distinct feel to those edges; and the stone before it was almost irrelevant. Seem to remember some guys doing tests to figure out how many chromox stropping passes it took to get to a "chromox finish" off a 1k beveling stone... and it wasn't a ton... and their criteria was an edge that felt like a "chromox edge". Because that's as much a thing as a Thuri edge, or a Naniwa SS 12k edge.

Meanwhile; clean stropping, you feel the edge of the stone you hit before it in the shave. I've heard guys say TI white is basically the same as chromox... a very distinct feel; can't comment on that myself; but the point stands... it defines the edge... stropping without a paste just takes any shave-quality stone finished edge and makes it shave ready. Pasted stropping eradicates the stone edge and replaces it with a pasted edge... generally even faster and more severely than going to another stone would have.

oh, this information may prevent me from purchasing a Naniwa Super Stone 12000. I have a Shapton Pro 12000 and I will learn how to use the green paste and be done with it for now. I happen to have some nice rolled horse hide to experiment with. Thanks.

 

[SliceOfLife]

I mean that's why pastes got popular. They're fast and easy and cheap. If you like the shave, a lot of reasons to just go with them.

 

[Gamma]

FWIW - TI white and Chromox are worlds apart.

Pastes got a bad name from the all knowing poobahs and their stories about how pasted strops will convex an edge to death. I bought into that for a moment but the truth is that it doesn't happen. It can happen, it just doesn't have to happen. Paying attention matters.
Another faction of 'know it alls' decided that pastes just weren't cool and the final nail in the coffin came from using the stuff in all sorts of wrong ways.

I don't like Chromox edges. I don't care how it's used I don't like the stuff. There are better compounds out there. My opinon is based on trials/comparisons. Not disdain for pastes.

What happened all too often is that new guys would get the green stuff in stick form from Amazon, and then proceed to totally coat a linen strop with it. And then do like 30 passes. The end result is a weeper farm on one's face.
Most of that stuff wasn't even pure Chromox. Even if you use good paste, it has to be used correctly.

The stuff, when applied sensibly, will tune an edge in 2-4 passes over 8-10 inches of 2" wide cloth webbing. It won't entirely cancel what came before it unless you keep on the stuff and even then can't totally wipe everything all the time, and the inevitable harshness can hurt skin.
Personally, I see the best results going to Chromox off a 5k, so, ironically, a N8k is a good jump point.

Companies like Dovo pushed pastes as the 'at home' option, and recommended bringing razors in 1x a year for a grind.
Barbers used the stuff big time. Back when synth stones were first coming around, there were no 12k synth options. Rouge polish though it's been around since forever.