Linen, Leather and The Rest Of The Story
Well I talked to an old timer the other day, and one thing lead to another. As a young boy he worked at one of the last full time saddle manufacturers back in the 20's. A side line for the company was strop making. Talking straight razors I learned some interesting things about strops. He told me from the moment you put your razor away until the next time you use it, the metal begins to corrode. A combination of soap, water, air quality, body oils and salts lead to immediate corrosion on the delicate edge of a carbon steel blade. The linen side of a strop removes this corrosion and the leather side re-polishes the delicate edge. No more, no less. He said this business about aligning teeth wasn't true on razors. Knives maybe, but not straights. The surface area is too microscopic to have teeth sticking out like a snaggle-tooth hillbilly (his words). At least, according to him, these teeth would be so small that it wouldn't be affected by linen and leather and that daily stropping would metal fatigue them in no time. He said, too, that if these teeth were indeed on a razor, it would shred the linen into a wooly mess, and turn a smooth strop into suede on the first passes. Also, he said that "Russian leather" strops were developed to act as both linen and leather. Because the Russian strops were rougher, they could remove corrosion and polish at the same time. Anyway, just another take on the subject. Makes more sense to me than the "butcher's steel" analogy.
