Thread: stropping before using a finishing stone for touch ups

how many people strop before going to a finishing stone for a touch up? how many people shave, find the edge is dulling, and go straight to the hone?

it seems to me that it would help some, but i dont always strop before using a finisher on an edge that has been shaved with. should i?

If the blade needs a touch-up, stropping before touching it up makes no sense. So yeah, straight to the hone.

Sometimes you don't need a hone, just a good stropping. I always go to the strop last, before shaving.

Stone first...strop last. And sometimes just a touch up on the CroOx strop if I catch it soon enough.

The strop to finisher actually makes some sense when you think about what's going on. The strop is realigning the edge; I don't know if all finishers do that or if they simply remove and polish the edge. When you take a misaligned blade to a hone, does it realign the edge first? Or, does it just begin to remove everything that isn't aligned with the bevel?

that was my thought, would you first get a ragged edge, before you honed even more on a slow (relatively) finisher..

I love using my KC crew cushion strop in between stones in my progression when honing...

i guess in my case its not so much touching up a dull razor, as refinishing a razor with a different finishing stone.. i can see how if it were severely dull the gains from stropping would be less.

This sounds like OCD to me. Stropping on linen (80+ laps) and then on leather at the end of the session should suffice.

This might be stange but sometimes i strop on my coti befor the leather stropping, meaning i go backwards on the dry hone very lightly. It might be a bad idea but in my mind you try to make your strop very flat when stropping and many people use somesort of abrasive on their strop so stropping on a coti hone a little before leather is like going to a pasted strop. Note though i don't use any pressure and very little time like 10 strokes.
This is what i do when i find a little dullness, then a while later when it gets bad i go directly to bbw(about 4000k) then the coti. so yes i go directly to the finisher for touch-ups.