TI Paste

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20
So I took delivery of TI paste that I ordered from invisibleedge last week. Has anyone else tried this paste? I popped this paste on my canvas strop and stropped my dovo special on the canvas and then plain leather.

The resulting shave was smoother and sharper than off of the naniwa 10k + plain leather strop. I also found there was no need to strop on cro ox. I am pleased with this paste and will try it on my TI Le Grelot in the coming few weeks to see if it works just as well with that razor.
 
The Thiers Issard paste is a mix of aluminium oxide and diamond particles in a wax binder, said to be the equivalent of using a 10,000 grit stone. It should be fine for touch-ups, and much prolong the amount of time between honing sessions on a stone, but won't replace a stone of course: over time the "give" or slackness in a strop or paddle will round the bevels on the razors edge, and they will need to be re-set. Over-use of the paste will hasten this rounding. Hanging strops, because there is more slack, will cause rounding of the bevel quicker than paddles: it is of little consequence when no paste is used as there is very little abrasive effect from just plain leather, but becomes a factor when an abrasive compound is used.

In itself, a little rounding doesn't hurt - in some cases it might even be seen as a good thing - when stropping wedges, for instance. Even an unpasted cotton hanging strop will round an edge in time, much quicker than a plain leather strop will. To decrease the rounding effect for ordinary razors a stiff paddle should be used - unless you like honing on stones pretty often, of course.

What micron size are the diamond particles in TI paste? The micron/grit tables are often conflicting. Depending on which table you look at, a 10,000 grit stone has an equivent micron size of 1.4, but some sites say less than 1.0 micron (which I find hard to believe as the Shapton glass stone rated at 12,000 grit has a micron size of 0.92 printed on the bottom). Chrome oxide should, theoretically, give a much smoother edge - being rated at around 0.5 microns an equivalent stone would be something like a 30,000 grit Shapton. Aluminium oxide (type A, presumably) comes in a whole variety of micron sizes, but for the TI paste to perform at somewhere near the level of CrOx, I would expect it to be around 0.5 - 0.25 microns in order to smooth the edge left by the diamond particles.

Regards,
Neil
 
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