Removing dings/impressions

I'm sorry if this has been answered before. I did some searches and couldn't find the answer I needed.

I have a Dovo strop that is pretty dinged up. I'm not sure what caused the damage, but it looks like it has a few dog tooth marks in it. The leather isn't punctured. The few dings are quite deep, however. Some of the dings/impressions are at the edge and some are toward the center of the strop. There are no jagged tears or nicks.

Will this effect the performance of the strop and if so, is there a way I can smooth out or repair the damage?

Thanks much.

That strop sounds like it might be excellent to administer corporal punishment but for razors forget it. You might try soaking it in water until its saturated and then letting it slowly dry but its probably toast.

Thanks. That's what I was afraid of.

Fortunately, it didn't cost me anything.

You might try just wetting the low areas in order to swell the low spots rather than soak the whole thing

Depressions shouldn't cause a problem when stropping, whereas raised areas would. I would wet it and roll it with a glass bottle or jar to make sure the majority of the surface is as flat as possible.

There is one other trick you might try. Place a wet wash cloth over the dings and apply heat with an iron. I've successfully used this to remove dings in a rifle stock.

These are all great suggestions. Thanks.

I soaked the strop in water overnight. Quite a few of the impressions came out. The few that were really deep are less severe, but still present. I'll try the iron tomorrow and see how that works.

As a side note, I've noticed some members speculating as to whether the Dovo strops come pre-pasted with white paste on the linen side. It seems that they do. When I was soaking the strop quite a bit of paste came off in the water.

Be very cautious with the iron, when leather gets hot and wet it has a tendency to shrink!

I wouldn't try that, or only very quick taps on the dings with the nose of a fairly cool iron.

+1 be very careful if you go the iron route - I'd personally go with the bottle rolling route...slightly safer IMO.

Mark

Thanks.

I'll experiment carefully with the iron. There are some places on the strop that turned out to be nicks/tears rather than impressions so this is probably a good one to experiment on.

I've used a bottle full of hot water before, that works pretty well.