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Post by mjclark on May 30, 2014 15:08:32 GMT -6
Comparing results with a guy called Keenedger over on another forum who has been working with Valet strops very successfullyr, it really looks like the key to vintage strops is: 1) Lap thoroughly with 600 2) Recondition thoroughly with moisturiser 3) Paste thoroughly with ferric oxide Meanwhile norfolkdick has been experimenting and got awesome results from a newly made unpasted soft leather strop which is a major discovery in itself. Vintage strops need reconditioning because a lot of them were impregnated with abrasives and degrade with age making them worse than useless. We've yet to see how far a blade can be pushed with these retrofitted strops, so let's get on it!
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Post by PJGH on May 30, 2014 17:54:10 GMT -6
Blow me down, Marcus! You've got a night of kinky fun ahead of you there! Oh, come on ... you were all thinking that? No? Okay, I'm a perv
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Post by mjclark on Jun 1, 2014 2:19:03 GMT -6
And here they are pasted. From L to R: Dick's Valet and Ever Ready, and my Wilkinson The Valet and ER strops are both very soft thin leather but the Wilkinson is noticeably thicker and stiffer. Perhaps this is to do with the different blade profiles - Valet and ER are flat machined SE blades whereas the Wilkinson is designed for thick hollow ground "wedge" blades like sections of a straight razor.
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RocketMan
Gem Star
RazorAddict
Welcome To The Sharp Side!
Posts: 4,167
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Post by RocketMan on Jun 1, 2014 21:16:23 GMT -6
I have been watching this with interest and now that the same ferric oxide paste as you use has arrived (canada post is never in a rush) I can get on it this week and see how I fair.
Great stuff!
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Post by mjclark on Jun 2, 2014 0:35:35 GMT -6
I have been watching this with interest and now that the same ferric oxide paste as you use has arrived (canada post is never in a rush) I can get on it this week and see how I fair. Great stuff! Yes excellent! Norfolkdick is right on this too, so let's compare notes
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Post by mjclark on Jun 5, 2014 0:49:20 GMT -6
Looking at the advertising, Valet claim a 40-50 shave life for their proprietary blades with stropping, Durham claim 5 blades per year and Wilkinson claim 3 month's use for their wedge blade. I wonder what GEM gave their blade life as?
These days we throw a party if we get more than ten shaves from a blade, but if the experience of straight shavers is anything to go buy, the use of abrasive pastes on the strop could prolong blade life for an astonishingly long time...
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Post by fram773 on Jun 6, 2014 22:01:13 GMT -6
So, Mjclark, you just use vintage blades like this without honing just stropping?
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Post by mjclark on Jun 6, 2014 23:23:11 GMT -6
So, Mjclark, you just use vintage blades like this without honing just stropping? No, stropping is a must! It is the stropping which gives these blades such long life. As this thread reveals,I have strops pasted with ferric oxide as well as the Ever Ready Automatic Stropper . For the Wilkinson wedge blades I have honed used ones but now have some NOS ones which were shaving arm hair straight out of the box and they too are stropped. Should be getting some NOS Valet blades today too...
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Post by mjclark on Jun 7, 2014 4:53:09 GMT -6
And a quick tip from Wilkinson - strop pushing upwards not dragging down. This will reduce the downward pressure on the blade even more making for an even better edge.
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Post by drumzalot on Jun 7, 2014 12:08:18 GMT -6
MJ, I don't want to hijack your thread I have a simple question though. As you can tell by what I am going to ask you I have zero experience in stropping any blade. I do have a near mint Gem automatic stropper.
I assume that I can't just buy a strop that accommodates the automatic stropper that I have? Would stropping a modern Gem blade have any real benefits compared to vintage SE blades?
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Post by mjclark on Jun 7, 2014 12:29:44 GMT -6
Hi Joe! You need a strop of the appropriate size and thickness. Vintage Durham, Wilkinson, Valet and ER strops can be reconditioned as per this thread, and norfolkick has had some new ones made up too. Stropping simply won't work with stainless and coated blades, but we have got great results with modern carbon steel blades eg Treet, Blue Star and CVS. Stropping smoothes the blade and increases its longevity. With paste on the strop, that blade could go for a long long time. And don't worry about any hijacking! There's still a lot to discover about all this, so all input and participation is valuable and the more people who get involved the better. Your GEM stropper looks cool too
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Post by drumzalot on Jun 7, 2014 13:40:20 GMT -6
Marcus, thank you for the advice. I have avoided this part of wet shaving for too long. This has sparked my interest since my favorite SE blades are Gem Blue Stars but they only last for about 2 shaves. CVS blades are okay they do pull and tug a bit but they are easy for me to find locally. I bet stropping the CVS blades would make them a far more pleasant experience.
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Post by mjclark on Jun 7, 2014 16:34:47 GMT -6
For sure Joe! Stropping Treet blades makes them super smooth and also increases the sharpness and longevity so the same should apply to Blue Stars and the CVS blades.
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norfolkdick
Master Shaver
Captain of the Razor Blades
Posts: 1,601
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Post by norfolkdick on Jun 10, 2014 10:17:43 GMT -6
Greetings I am now ready for the next instalment of stropping SE blades with a view to making them smoother shaving. Over the weekend I was in Sussex and I met up with an old friend who I am in regular phone contact with he is a retired engineer with a comprehensive workshop and he has made me a hand held stropper for SE blades turned from brass. He has bored out the centre to the diameter of the depth of the spine on an SE blade and made a slot with a 9 thou. slitting saw, the blade simply slots in and is held 100% rigid, the angle the blade is held at whilst the stropper touches the strop seems about right but it is guesswork and in any case using this method there is really no way to control it, the wall thickness of the brass is turned down to as thin as is sensible. He also made me a paddle strop from a piece of oak and faced it on one side with balsa I have stuck a piece of thick leather on the other side and abraded the surface with 600 wet and dry paper and have moistened it. I have dressed the balsa with Feox and left the leather side undressed. I have obtained fron E-bay a metre of 40mm wide 2mm thick cotton webbing and sewn the top and bottom by machine to make two strops I have had to put a bit of super glue on the bottom of the webbing to stop it fraying as I cannot cover the end as it will make it too thick to feed into an ER stropper or a Valet razor. One strop I have pasted with Feox and the other with Chromox these cost me £3.99 delivered! Not much to lose there! The local leather belt maker has made me four strops two I have pasted with Feox and Chromox and two are unpasted. I am still waiting for my Neil Miller strop to arrive. I have stropped four Treet carbon blades 30 times, one on a plain new strop, one on a Cromox pasted new strop and one on a Feox pasted new strop and the final one on the paddle strop stropped 30 times again on just the plain leather side. This will be tomorrows shave and is the most scientific I can make the test at least now there is 'a level playing field'. I have already tried the cotton strops and I was not very impressed until I dressed them they were so slippery that there was insufficient friction (Draw; I learnt that word last week!) to turn over the blade, they seem to make a new blade rougher, perhaps they would be of some use on an already rough blade before moving on to the leather? I will report back in the morning! Regards Dick.
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Post by mjclark on Jun 10, 2014 13:01:30 GMT -6
Wow Dick! That is so amazing! You have taken this to the next level by producing new stropping equipment. It feels like our whole experience of SEs is being transformed by these experiments. I'm very excited to hear your results.
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