Gents,

Once in a while, I hear a "scratchy" sound for a few strokes of my stropping sequence. The sound is difficult to describe, but instead of a nice smooth "swish" sound, it's more of a high-pitch scratching sound... It happens more often during the pull stroke than the push stroke. When I hear it, I usually make a small adjustment in my grip and finger position, and usually the next stroke is nice and smooth. I use a 3 inch wide, english bridal, hanging leather strop. The first few times, I thought it might be caused by the spine not being in contact with the strop. However, I've been using the strop for over 6 months and I generally feel confident in my technique and as far as I can tell, the spine is in fact always contacting the leather.

Has anybody else experienced this? Any ideas for a cause of the issue, and how to fix it?

Thanks in advance!