The Straight Razor Strop – Something of a Forgotten Hero
Straight razors need to be stropped before each shave, yet razor strops seem to take a back seat in popularity compared to hones. Let’s see if we can find out why.
The straight razor strop falls broadly into two types: the wall-mounted or ‘hanging’ strop and the hand-held or ‘paddle’ strop – which you use is a matter of personal preference. Both are basically strips of leather (though ‘vegetarian’ strops are now available in certain places) that are used to give the edge of the straight razor its final polish before use. Yet the art of stropping seems to be – to some degree at least – overlooked, especially by newcomers to straight razor shaving.
This may seem odd but is a very common problem that can result in poor results from the razor. I’ve seen many emails that run along the lines of ‘I recently got a shave-ready straight razor and it was great until I used it a few times – now it seems dull. Does it need honing?’ It’s those last few words that tell the tale!
There seems to be a bias towards honing razors in much of the information available on the internet, yet most razors will only need honing perhaps twice or three times a year – IF stropping is done properly! Perhaps it’s the technical aspects of honing that appeal so much – it is certainly a technical subject and needs high skill levels to perform properly – but stropping needs its own skillset and here is where the problem lies.
It seems that stropping gets ‘glossed over’ on a lot of occasions in favour of discussing either the merits of the razor itself or the aforementioned hones. Yet a good stropping technique is essential if the edge of a straight razor is to be maintained in order that it gives not only a close but also a smooth, comfortable shave. I’m not going to go into the mechanics of stropping in this article – that’s well documented elsewhere – but rather on how to choose the right strop for your razor and what to use with it.
Hang on! Strops just do one thing, don’t they?
Well, in days gone by this was certainly true – most strops were simple smooth leather strips and the razor was used directly onto the bare leather. These days things are a little different, and strops can be used not only to ‘finish’ a straight razor edge but also to bridge the gap between the strop and hone. Why should this be necessary, though?
The answer lies largely in the steel used for blades. Vintage – and let’s define that broadly as pre-1950 – blades were almost all of high-carbon steel that, although hardened and tempered to take that razor-edge, were somewhat softer than the stainless steel that began to appear post-1950 and that is produced today.
Also, the high-carbon steels now used in straight razor blades is commonly far harder than vintage blades would have enjoyed and this brings its own problems – along with the lesser-used stainless steel. The fact is that the ‘bare’ strop now struggles to put that polished, ‘finished’ edge on the razor – and this leads to the ‘dull edge’ complaints!
Special abrasive pastes have been available for many years and these are applied to the strop to turn it -effectively – into a ‘draw-hone’. These work well with vintage blades but not so well with the modern, hard steel. Why? Well in some cases the abrasive material in the paste is in fact softer than the razor steel – so it has little or no effect on the edge and indeed may make it duller than before it was stropped. The answer here lies in diamond-based pastes that are now widely available.
Diamond is far, far harder than any steel used in razor production so will ‘cut’ the steel properly as intended. The diamond particles themselves are very small, varying from usually the 6 micron diameter for coarse paste through 3 micron, 1 micron and right up to 0.25 micron. When you consider that a micron is one-millionth of a metre it becomes apparent why a straight razor has such an incredibly fine edge.
These diamond pastes are applied to different strops – one grade of paste to one strop – and, with correct stropping technique, can prolong the shave-ready edge of a razor almost indefinitely, making a visit to the hone a much less frequent event. So now, when the ‘bare’ strop cannot restore the edge anymore, a visit to the 0.25 or 1 micron pasted strop usually brings it back to full shave-readiness quickly and effectively.
So – don’t forget the strop when it comes to maintaining your straight razor’s edge! Whatever model razor you have – vintage, new, stainless or high carbon steel blade – it will repay your learning to strop properly by giving you that thing the straight razor is justifiably famous for – a wonderfully close and comfortable shave.
Think about what it is you need to achieve – a great edge – and what equipment you will need to produce those results. Don’t forget that stropping. like straight razor shaving, takes practice to get right and that the more you do it, the easier it becomes and the improvement in your shave shows this. In conclusion, think of your strop as your razor’s partner, each needing the other to achieve best results, and you will not go very far wrong!