Since I purchased a shave-ready straight razor from the classifieds here a while back and have started shaving with it I needed a strop. I don't have the money to buy one at the moment (I've spent waaay too much money on shave gear already, and I'm unemployed so I don't have that much money to spend to start with). However, since I make knives as a hobby, I had some leather laying about which I thought could be used for this purpose.

The leather in question is 2.5 millimeter thick vegetable tanned leather which I had made into a temporary, rectangular sheath for a dirk/dagger I made. Since I have made another sheath for the dagger the temporary sheath was just taking up space in my bag of leather scrap. I cut the sheath open, separating the two leather pieces, and glued them to a couple of about 3 millimeters thick balsa planks (which I've been using to make presentation boxes for the knives I've sold). I glued the meat side of the leather onto the balsa, leaving the skin side for stropping.

Having read that the strop should have a "suede" finish, not a completely glossy finish like this leather had, I decided to sand the leather, using 150 grit sand paper around a sanding block. The finish this gave the leather is reminiscent of suede, but the "burr" is very fine. This did create some "drag" for the razor when I used the strop, so I think it works as it should. I kept one "paddle strop" like this.

The other paddle strop got a coating of polishing paste. I bought a chunk of paste which looks like a cylinder of chalk, and I usually use it to polish knife handles to a nice glossy finish on a buffing wheel. I rubbed the chunk of paste on the strop and it seemed to coat it with a fine layer of the white powdery stuff. Hopefully it will work as a "pasted paddle strop".

Any thoughts on this method of making one's own strops?