Leather Advice

[Jimbo]

This is sort of the opposite of ChrisL's thread on leather types.

I have an antique (or perhaps vintage) silver plate retractable strop that I would like to be able to use again. Unfortunately it's not just a simple matter of trying to recondition the leather, as in its current shape the leather has a few bad cuts and nicks in rather unfortunate places. If I ever want to use it again I'll need to replace the leather.

So, the leather I guess needs to be thin enough to roll up into the casing when retracted. But it also needs to be thick enough to provide adequate stropping when extended. And I don't know what this relates to (perhaps suppleness or quality of the leather) but because it will spend most of its time rolled up, it needs to be able to withstand creasing too.

Anyway, I'll probably take it to a leathersmith (is that the word?) to get their opinion, but I was hoping people may have some ideas beforehand regarding the best-suited leather for this purpose that I could put to the leather guy.

Here are a couple of pictures of the item in question - the strop extends out a lot further (probably 3 times further) than the second picture shows. That was as far as I could get it to come out before it wanted to retract....

Thanks for any help or info.





James.