Thread: Made my own Balsa strop!

decided to make my first attempt at a homemade balsa stop last night... all in all I think it went very well...

first step was to pick up a couple of pieces of balsa wood from Michaels.... i can't remember the kind of wood I mounted the balsa to, but I basically just used some wood glue and left it overnight with some weights on it.... I kept the piece it is mounted to longer... as a hand grip

for the next step I just laid some 220 grit sandpaper on the countertop with a little bit of water to help it stick.... and passed the balsa wood over the sand paper until flat and smooth...

next I carved a 1/16 inch groove down the center of the balsa wood to separate it into two distinct sections...

the last step was to follow the instructions given with the poor man's balsa stop I ordered some time ago from Larry at Whipped dog....

I used a little bit of Johnson's baby oil as a pure mineral oil to mix the chromium oxide powder and iron oxide powder.... then I simply painted a couple of X's on the balsa wood with my finger tip....sprinkled a few drops of baby oil on the strop and spread the powder/pate around......

I would say the whole project took about an hour of actual work, at first I think I put too much of the paste on each side of the strop so I went back with paper towels and proceeded to wipe off a lot of the excess... haven't had a chance to try it yet but we'll see how it goes : )