[Richard]

I can't find a thread on this question and was wanting to gather all the conventional wisdom. Is a linen/canvass strop helpful before using the leather when stropping or is the leather sufficient?

Richard

“Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any” – Mark Twain

[jnich67]

There is something of a debate on this subject. I think most would tell you leather is sufficient. However, some would also add that linen/canvas helps even more.

Jordan

[gssixgun]

Here is the latest of that debate

What does stropping do? What is the leathers grit?

[Seraphim]

Yeah , but that debate got side tracked into discussions of stropping whilst "commando" to impress the ladies.



Bottom line: you don't need anything other than a nice leather strop. Really.

But most guys like to screw around with trying out all sorts of stuff to get themselves all confused, so linen/canvas is a cool option for that too!

I have a smooth canvas strop, I'm not sure of the efficacy of it, but I do like to use it, as it makes a fantastically cool "ZzzzzzzzzzzzZZZIIIIIIIIIIIP!.....zzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZ ZZZZiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIIPPPP!" sound as you strop it, like a pair of courdiroys on steroids. That's how I roll...

[Tony Miller]

The Popular mechanics article pretty much confirms what many have said all along. The leather still basically realigns the burr/wavy edge and the linen is thought to be mildly abrasive. Most find the natural, less processed fibers (linen/hemp) have a bit more abrasive quality than highly processed fibers (cotton).

I rarely use cloth myself, linen or cotton but most have sid they get better results or faster results when using it. Sme who have tried my line felt it more abrasive than cotton, a few have said no difference.

(BTW, the mill just quoted me another, at least 6 week delay on genuine linen in the 3" width)


Tony

[PuFFaH]

I regularly touch cloth

PuFF

[Ockham]

I use a Tony Miller Latigo strop with linen and in my daily routine, I always strop first on the linen 60 to 80 strokes and on the leather 25 to 50 strokes - I like the sound of the razor on the linen like Seraphim and the feeling of the blade against the leather (don't make much noise but stick on it)... I think I am addicted.

But to answer the question, I feel - but I can be wrong, only a newbie I am - that the linen keep my edge in a better cutting shape than if I only strop on the leather; it seems that the edge stay longer sharp before needing to go to the stone or pasted strop for a touch up... maybe I am wrong and only found a reason to strop more...

[kaptain_zero]

There was a linen thread over on SMF a while ago, the proponents for the linen suggested to think of it as your finest hone which you would drop back to first to refresh an edge. There were some indications that vintage linens *may* have better performance than the new stuff we see today. Illinois has a rather plastic feeling linen, one of the cotton canvas versions from Tony was a bit too bumpy for my tastes but I love the genuine linen he has as an option. Then again, I think he may have a different Cotton canvas now than the one I got but I'm not sure... Tony, fill us in if you read this.

The Dovo strops apparently have something quite nice in the way of linen but I don't own one of those so I can't give my personal opinion.

For me personally at this stage of my experimentation, I've found the linens to be of little help to my edges and much prefer the rough Illinois 827 strop as my "linen" and then finish on a smooth latigo from Tony. I find my edges really perk up after 50 laps on the 827 and the latigo gives it the final polish but I can get a great shave straight off the 827 if I'm in a rush or my arm is getting tired of stropping!

Regards

Christian

[Bart]

I always do about 20 laps on linen and 30 on leather before each shave. When I first read about the linen supposedly not offering anything extra, I decided to omit it for a while.
About one month later, I struck me that my razors needed more frequent touch-ups. I speculated that the linen does sort of a very gentle touch-up with each time you use it, and I reinstated my previous use of it.

It should be doable to hone up two identical razors, strop one on leather only and the other on linen and leather, before shaving half a face with one and the other half with the other. Keep doing that for a few weeks till a difference in performance shows up (or doesn't show up) Such an experiment would offer a more objective view on the posed question.

I'm too busy comparing differently honed, but otherwise identical, razors to get into that right now. Scratch pattern pictures
Maybe later.

Best regards,
Bart.

[Howard]

The leather should be sufficient. Of the two, the leather is finer than the linen/canvas meaning that if the razor is dull, use the linen side first and then the leather. It's all about progression. I call the art "progressive honing" because you progress from coarser to finer in search of . . . the perfect edge.

[Tony Miller]

Christian,
Yes, my newer cotton is a much finer weave. It is a hard fine weave somewhat like the Illinois material but without the plastic feel. The cloth looks similar except mine is just natural cotton with no coatings at all, just bare hard cotton.


Tony

[PonderingTurtle]

Originally Posted by Bart

I always do about 20 laps on linen and 30 on leather before each shave. When I first read about the linen supposedly not offering anything extra, I decided to omit it for a while.
About one month later, I struck me that my razors needed more frequent touch-ups. I speculated that the linen does sort of a very gentle touch-up with each time you use it, and I reinstated my previous use of it.

It should be doable to hone up two identical razors, strop one on leather only and the other on linen and leather, before shaving half a face with one and the other half with the other. Keep doing that for a few weeks till a difference in performance shows up (or doesn't show up) Such an experiment would offer a more objective view on the posed question.

I'm too busy comparing differently honed, but otherwise identical, razors to get into that right now. Scratch pattern pictures
Maybe later.

Best regards,
Bart.

That looks like an insufficiently blinded experiment. It seems likely that the difference is subtle at best, and that sort of experiment can just show your bias or a false signal.

I have been wondering how much of what people report is not anything physical and is purely psychological. Not that there is much of a problem with a conforting soothing ritual that is not creating a substantive difference.

[PuFFaH]

I wonder why the linen strop was ever invented if there is no need for it. I agree with the earlier statement that old linens work better than new ones due to their treatment. Lots on here claim there is no need for it's use and I wonder if they base this opinion on their use of modern linens. Even the modern Dovo linen is nothing like old linens for finish treatment, though it is a good linen all the same.
Howard makes the point well when he says that linen can be used as part of the progression to a good edge but Leather alone can when done correctly hold off the need for linen/touch-up for a very long time. linen for me works as a maintenance process and sometimes as a corrective tool. I wonder if some just require more from Linen than it can deliver.

PuFF

[Seraphim]

Microscope pics at 200x

OK, so pic #1 is the edge of my LeGrelot 1/4 grind finished off on 0.5um diamond lapping film.

Now, this isn't very scientific, as I then proceeded to strop it on my new Kintaka white pasted canvas (30-40laps), TM latigo (30-40), and finally the Kintaka smooth horsehide(30-40).

But pic #2 shows the same edge after all of that.

You can see the original striations from the 0.5um hone, and also now in the opposite direction similar sized striations. I am assuming that these are from the white paste on the new canvas strop (see razor #2 below...).

This razor HHT like a champ. I'll give it a shave tonight or tomorrow morn...

Just thought I'd add these images of what is actually going on after canvas stropping.


I did previuosly take a look at another razor before and after latigo only stropping, but the images are a bit blurry.

Pic #3 is my Fernando Esser finished off on 1.0um diamond film.

Pic#4 is the same razor after 30-40 laps on latigo. Not much change that I can see

[Seraphim]

From ancient sea scrolls barber manual, courtesy of Classic shaving:

How-To and Why -

[JimmyHAD]

Took me awhile to find this post by mparker762 but I finally did and I think it adds to the conversation. It is the 4th post in the thread. The whole thread is very informative as is the article it refers to.

[Bart]

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Microscope pics at 200x

(...)
Not much change that I can see

Seraphim, I thank you for the magnification pictures you often share on various threads. I certainly think they're useful, but at the same time I also believe that we have to approach those high magnification photo's with great caution.

I don't know much about optics (probably far less than you anyway), but I like using my stereomicroscope, certainly as an aid for honing and assessing razors. But we have to be careful with the optical resolution of these devices.

On a normal optical microscope (the one most of us know out of classrooms) there is a theoretical resolution of 0.2 micron (anything beyond that can't be seen). Above that limit, there is decreasing contrast with increasing magnification, resulting in very hazy, extremely low contrast images when appraching the optical limits of a microscope.
NOW, when it comes to stereomicroscopes, I quote: "Great working distance and depth of field here are important qualities for this type of microscope. Both qualities are inversely correlated with resolution: the higher the resolution (i.e. the shorter the distance at which two adjacent points can be distinguished as separate), the smaller the depth of field and working distance. A stereo microscope has a useful magnification up to 100×. The resolution is maximally in the order of an average 10× objective in a compound microscope, and often much lower." (Optical microscope - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

I think that makes stereomicroscopes fairly useless for observing the effects of anything beyond 1 micron, ruling out Chromium Oxide, the possible abrasiveness of linen, and leather.

About the leather strop... Here's something I've done many times and should be easily repeatable for anyone owning a coticule:
Take a sharp razor that passes the HHT. Do about 10 laps on the coticule with a decent slurry. Witness how the HHT-ability of the razor completely dissapears by this action. Next, get to your strop and do about 50 laps. Try the HHT again. There will be a drastical difference.
I never tried this with the linen, but I will, as soon as I have time tomorrow.

What AFdavis said in the other thread about "understropping" makes a lot of sense to me. Including the linen at least leads to doing more stropping laps for me, so that's maybe why I noticed better longevity of the edges.
Another thing that I've picked up about the linen ( in a Dutch shaving book) is that during stropping, very small, but sharp particles may be knocked of the edge. If it happens on linen, those particles get safely embedded in the fabric of the cloth. If the same happens on leather, they may stick out the surface, doing possible microdamage to the edge. In that sense, the linen prepares the edge for a safe stropping session on the leather. I 'm doubtful about all this, but wanted to share it anyway.

Bart.

[Richard]

Thanks for all the feedback guys. Reason I raised the question is that I have a linen/leather strop from classic shaving and I got a really outstanding all leather strop from Jacques13 at our straight razor meeting last Saturday. I have a friend who is using a wade & butcher but has no strop. I was just wondering which of the 2 to part with.

Rich

"There is no native criminal class except Congress,"- Mark Twain

[Seraphim]

Originally Posted by Bart

Seraphim, I thank you for the magnification pictures you often share on various threads. I certainly think they're useful, but at the same time I also believe that we have to approach those high magnification photo's with great caution.

I don't know much about optics (probably far less than you anyway), but I like using my stereomicroscope, certainly as an aid for honing and assessing razors. But we have to be careful with the optical resolution of these devices.

On a normal optical microscope (the one most of us know out of classrooms) there is a theoretical resolution of 0.2 micron (anything beyond that can't be seen). Above that limit, there is decreasing contrast with increasing magnification, resulting in very hazy, extremely low contrast images when appraching the optical limits of a microscope.
NOW, when it comes to stereomicroscopes, I quote: "Great working distance and depth of field here are important qualities for this type of microscope. Both qualities are inversely correlated with resolution: the higher the resolution (i.e. the shorter the distance at which two adjacent points can be distinguished as separate), the smaller the depth of field and working distance. A stereo microscope has a useful magnification up to 100×. The resolution is maximally in the order of an average 10× objective in a compound microscope, and often much lower." (Optical microscope - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

I think that makes stereomicroscopes fairly useless for observing the effects of anything beyond 1 micron, ruling out Chromium Oxide, the possible abrasiveness of linen, and leather.

About the leather strop... Here's something I've done many times and should be easily repeatable for anyone owning a coticule:
Take a sharp razor that passes the HHT. Do about 10 laps on the coticule with a decent slurry. Witness how the HHT-ability of the razor completely dissapears by this action. Next, get to your strop and do about 50 laps. Try the HHT again. There will be a drastical difference.
I never tried this with the linen, but I will, as soon as I have time tomorrow.

What AFdavis said in the other thread about "understropping" makes a lot of sense to me. Including the linen at least leads to doing more stropping laps for me, so that's maybe why I noticed better longevity of the edges.
Another thing that I've picked up about the linen ( in a Dutch shaving book) is that during stropping, very small, but sharp particles may be knocked of the edge. If it happens on linen, those particles get safely embedded in the fabric of the cloth. If the same happens on leather, they may stick out the surface, doing possible microdamage to the edge. In that sense, the linen prepares the edge for a safe stropping session on the leather. I 'm doubtful about all this, but wanted to share it anyway.

Bart.

I pretty much agree with all you have said.

There is certainly *something* that goes on with a leather stroped edge that isn't apparently visible, even at 200x. Certainly I have also had a razor that didn't HHT well, and then I gave it a good leather only stropping, and viola! Slicing hairs like no tomorrow...

I have just tried to share my microscope pics to help us get an empirical grasp for some of the stuff that we can actually see happening with the edge from honing, etc. As most all of us like to postulate on what we *think* is going on, but really we have no idea...

My scope will go to 1000x, and I also have a scanning electron microscope in the lab here. But it seems as though 200x is somewhat the standard, as that is what Tim Zowada used on his excellent edge investigation on his site, so I went with that magnification.

I must say that what I found out from my recent images above, is that the white strop paste actually is very lightly abrasive. Perhaps this is a key ingredient to using a linen or canvas strop? Using a plain linen or canvas many have said they see little or no discernable effect. However with the white chalk pasted strop there is clearly some further edge modification going on.

If you read the barber's manual link I posted it talked about treating a canvas strop with bar soap to fill in the weave. I think many of the old time barbers had their canvas strops treated with something (ala the white paste), and thus they were a key ingredient to razor maintanence.

I had a shave this morning with the LeGrelot edge as shown in my pic #2 above (I gave it another round of stropping though....couldn't help myself!) and it was an excellent shave.

So, I'm now thinking of perhaps getting soem of the white paste for my TM canvas as well. I think it's good stuff.

As far as the microscope goes, it is a really fun toy, but it mostly makes you (OK, me...) nuts about looking for the perfect edge.

I have found the best judge of a good shaving edge to be a combination on HHT and looking at the very edge under a bright single point lightsource (bright sunshine is awesome for this!) and making sure the glint along the very edge is as small and even as it can be.

All fun stuff! I love straight razors!

[Bart]

Originally Posted by Seraphim

I have found the best judge of a good shaving edge to be a combination on HHT and looking at