pasted strop question

[kansascutthroat]

i have a jemico red russian/linen strop that i put dovo red paste on. i was under the impression that the red paste would "tune up" a less than sharp blade. i also have an excellent old red imp strop treated with neatsfoot oil i use for final finish. the question--it seems that when i use the pasted strop the blade "feels" sharper after a couple light passes, but then when i go to the finish strop the blade winds up more dull than when i began. do i maybe have too much paste on the strop? i wondered if i should wipe it down and just reapply the dovo yellow. just cant imagine what i could be doing wrong.
thanks for any help!

 

[Jimboroo]

Unfortunately once the abrasive paste is on I think it is very difficult to get the strop back to original condition.

I have used the Dovo red paste on a strop and it has worked. Perhaps you do have the paste applied too thickly - try scraping some off and making sure it is evenly but thinly coating the entire strop surface.

Also make sure you are keeping the strop very taut and using very good stropping technique - keep the spine on the strop at all times, flip on the spine, use a light pressure, make sure you are stropping the entire edge etc. Pasted hanging strops can be tricky - they can wipe an edge off a blade if you are not careful with technique.

Good Luck!

James.

 

[mparker762]

The Dovo red paste will sharpen up a razor, but it's fairly coarse (~3 micron) and really needs a finer polish like the Dovo black paste to be used after it to put on the final polish. Sharpness is really a matter of two physical characteristics of the blade: how easily does the edge cut into the hair, and how much friction is there between the hair and blade. The red paste will remove minor chips and cut back the bevels so the razor is sharp again, but it also roughens up the bevels, which increases the friction against the whiskers. The black paste will sharpen the edge a bit more, but mostly it polishes the bevel smooth so there's very little friction against the whiskers. The commercial blade manufacturers don't bother with the final polishing step because they can just coat the blades in teflon.

It doesn't take much of either paste on the strop to do the job, but it should still work pretty well even if you have a lot on the strop (though if it's like stropping on a cake then you might want to scrape some off...).

On your strop I'd leave the red side alone until I had tried polishing the blade on a finishing paste, since it sounds like that's the primary problem. If the black paste doesn't do it then maybe look at removing some of the excess red paste.