my 0.5 micron diamond paste arrived in the post today, so I applied it sparingly to the homemade leather paddle strop that I made. Following Oscar 11's sound advice on how he strops his straights, I did 20 laps on the diamond pasted strop, 20 laps on heavy wool felt loaded with chromium oxide, carefully wiped the blade clean and then 50 laps on my Illinois 827 strop, I cannot believe how sharp the blade is, much sharper than I have managed to get before, it now pops hairs on my arm like crazy, the true test of course is to shave test it tomorrow, hopefully I have done enough on the cro- ox to smooth out the edge, will let you know how I get on tomorrow!!
Today shave tested my edge after stropping it yesterday. not as smooth as I had expected , it left some stubble on the downward stroke, guess it,s back to the cro-ox strop, it's still popping hairs like crazy, just not stubble!!!
