Thread: Making a paddle strop

I have a large piece of full grain compressed leather for making strops. I was thinking of using a section of it to make a paddle strop. Can I simply glue this to a piece of wood as is, or do I need to put some other type of material under the leather before attaching it to the wooden paddle?

Thanks in advance
Adam

I made one of my own a few weeks ago and glued the leather directly to the wood. It works fine but feels a little bit 'hard' when I'm stropping. I'm thinking of making another and putting a piece of felt under the leather to see how it works.

Thanks for the reply. That's what I was worried about, it being too hard.

If you ae going to be using it with pastes for honing, hard is a good thing.

I feel firm is better. Some guys like padd strops but I glue the leather directly to the wood and try to use a very firm leather as well.

Tony

Thanks for the replies everyone. I guess I'll just glue the leather directly to the wood. If I don't like it, I can always pull the leather up, and put padding under it.

Thanks again
Adam

What type of glue do you use when attaching leather to wood? Would something like Gorilla Glue work or is there another product out there that works better?

I've had good luck with wood glue. You don't need tons of glue on the backing, just enough to provide decent coverage. If you use a little too much, that's okay because you'll have a few minutes to wipe it up. Then I put a piece of wood ontop of the glued up strop, and apply tons of clamping pressure. on a 3x11 strop, I use about 5 or six clamps. This squeezes out all the excess glue, and I wipe it up pretty soon afterward.

Like the others said - a hard pasted strop is good. It's basically a sharpening stone made out of leather and a compound, and I don't see any flexible sharpening stones out there.

Ben

Originally Posted by PhilEagle

What type of glue do you use when attaching leather to wood? Would something like Gorilla Glue work or is there another product out there that works better?

I've used rubber cement on both the wood and the leather. Worked great.

I just made one with leather on a block of wood.