Thread: Getting some free Hand America Horse leather and need to make a strop

Is the leather still in it's "raw" state? Meaning, has it been finished/sanded yet? If not, then it's probably the same Hand American horsehide that I was able to get from Hand American a few months back. I got 3 of the horse butt strips (what's left over after the "shells" are removed. These strips were approx 5' long and at their thickest point approx 12". The grain side of this leather IMO is not suitable for making a fine leather strop and the "flesh" side as it's called (the side with a high suede nap) is also quite rough.

The grain side on these strips have a fair amount of fat wrinkles, scars, bumps, etc. Don't get me wrong, it's great leather that's as tough as nails. I've cut all strips to 24" by 2.5" and have probably 8-9 strips?

Long lead in, I know, but in answer to your question, IF your leather is in the same natural state as the horsehide I have, you'd be better off hand finishing the surface. I used a flat sanding block and 150-200 grit sandpaper (not wet/dry as it loads too quickly for this, but the regular sandpaper). Sand, sand and sand and sand some more. This gave me additional respect for Tony Miller and Kenrup. Hand finishing a strop to get an utterly silky surface (which I have) is HARD WORK and takes a lot of time. Also, this leather can be a bit wavy; more than I'd like. It needs to be flattened as a final step. The results though are fabulous. I'll try and post a few pics.

Chris L

Thanks everyone for your replies! Chris, you're dead on with the leather. The big brown truck visited me today, and the leather is exactly as you describe. I don't have a problem with hand finishing it - in fact that's what's so appealing about it to me. I love to make stuff "mine". When I get a razor, I'll definitely be making my own scales.

I'll pick up some regular sandpaper tomorrow and get started, as all I've got right now is various wet/dry grits. I'm assuming that I sand the smooth grain side, and not the flesh side. Is this right?

Pics of what the final product should look like would be extremely helpful, if you've got the inclination and the time. If not, that's understandable, too.

Thanks!

Ben

Here come the pics:

First pic: The "grain" side of the Hand American horse butt leather. It's hard to tell from the 2 dimensional picture, but the fat wrinkles found on parts of the leather are quite raised and are not up to par as is in my book.

Next pic is the "flesh" side of the leather. Very uneven. Even for using the flesh side as a canvas/linen alternative, I like the flesh side to be more uniform than this. We're talking about fine edges of delicate instruments here!

Now we're getting into the good stuff! This next pic is the the grain side, but hand finished and oh so silky smooth. A very subtle nubuck finish. It gives a subtle but wonderful draw. The squiggle lines are simply the areas where just before the picture was taken I ran two fingers down the strop. Rub the other way, and the squiggles disappear. I did this to show the finish. Sanding to this level and uniformity took almost 2 hours. Granted it was my first attempt, but I could see this easily taking me over an hour on the other strips I'll finish in the same manner.

Remember that ugly "flesh" side? Here it is. Totally uniform. More of a nap than the nubuck grain side, but not by that much. Virtually identical to the finish on a Dovo 3" Extra Wide strop. Which makes sense since those strops actually are the flesh side rather than the grain side. This side can also be used as a finish strop prior to shaving rather than just a prep strop like a canvas or linen. This was also achieved by hand sanding.

Hand American hard felt as an alternative to canvas/linen matched to the horsehide strop. When both are held together during stropping on the leather, the heft is a true pleasure.

My personal favorite for strops......the barber style ends. Definitely.


I hope this helps. Cutting this extremely tough leather is difficult; well, it's difficult to cut straight lines. I did not buy a leather cutting knife. I used a rotary cutter my wife uses for her sewing. Razor sharp hefty circular blades and a straight edge were my cutting tools. I was able to cut straight lines in this leather like butter.

Chris L

Now you realize why horsehide strops, or any for that matter cost what they do. I know from my horse butt strips I can typically cut one good strop, if I get lucky two pieces, if unlucky none. I use a template to find a single fairly flawless spot. By flawless I mean flat and smooth. There may be color variations but I avoid raised scars. I think Keith once mentioned a yield of one piece as well on his website.The hand sanding, scrubbing, etc... can add lots of time on top of the material costs.

Even with my Latigo material I often only get a 50% yield from a hide.

Leather is reasonably inexpensive BUT you have to pay for the good along with the bad.

Tony

Originally Posted by Tony Miller

Now you realize why horsehide strops, or any for that matter cost what they do. I know from my horse butt strips I can typically cut one good strop, if I get lucky two pieces, if unlucky none. I use a template to find a single fairly flawless spot. By flawless I mean flat and smooth. There may be color variations but I avoid raised scars. I think Keith once mentioned a yield of one piece as well on his website.The hand sanding, scrubbing, etc... can add lots of time on top of the material costs.

Even with my Latigo material I often only get a 50% yield from a hide.

Leather is reasonably inexpensive BUT you have to pay for the good along with the bad.

Tony

Thanks for commenting here, Tony. You're absolutely correct that this experimental project of mine has given me a new perspective on what's needed and what goes into making a good strop.

Chris L

Hey fellas,

I have looked at HandAmerican. Is their site often down? I waited several days and eventually decided to stop by the local Woodcraft store and pick up another small sheet of the HandAmerican product they sell- A ~6 x 12 sheet of compressed oak tan...

Questions: When will HA site be updated? Do they offer compressed leather in long lengths for razor? Will Chris L who invited me here from Japanese Woodworking Forum offer a strip of his horse butt for minimal compensation? Does Tony Miller sell his linen upgrade seperately? What sizes of hard felt does HA offer? What is it made of?

Originally Posted by kevint

Hey fellas,

I have looked at HandAmerican. Is their site often down? I waited several days and eventually decided to stop by the local Woodcraft store and pick up another small sheet of the HandAmerican product they sell- A ~6 x 12 sheet of compressed oak tan...

Questions: When will HA site be updated? Do they offer compressed leather in long lengths for razor? Will Chris L who invited me here from Japanese Woodworking Forum offer a strip of his horse butt for minimal compensation? Does Tony Miller sell his linen upgrade seperately? What sizes of hard felt does HA offer? What is it made of?

Hey Kevin, I didn't realize you came from the Japanese Woodworking Forum. You guys were very welcoming and were very generous in offering your information regarding honing woodworking tools on the Shapton Ceramic on Glass stones. The info given to me by you guys on that site sealed the deal on me taking the Shapton glass stone plunge back when Shapton was still a fringe word in our honing purposes. Really then, given the surge of Shapton glass stone users for razors.....SRP has you guys to thank.

Here's what I can say about my personal Hand American experience. I'll say first off and very clearly, I do not discourage anyone from buying from Hand American. Again, I will only speak of my personal account of the horse butt transaction. I placed an original order and didn't receive the order for so long I thought maybe I was never going to get it. This was even after several acknowledged emails back and forth; finally, I filed a Paypal dispute and Keith made good and all was/is forgiven on my end. He told me, and I believe it's fairly common knowledge, that Hand American is transitioning to wholesale supply (like they have to Woodcraft, etc) which I take to mean at some point in the future, no sales through a Hand American website? I have no idea when their site will be back up. I hope it does come back. And, I hope I'm wrong about the possibility of no Hand American sales through their website. It would be great if Keith could swing on over here to SRP and maybe comment on what the plans are for Hand American.


As such, I feel the horse butt I did get is hard to come by for us. Keith was nice enough to give me a bit more than I ordered as well as a bit more of the hard felt for the very long delay in getting my order out. It shouldn't be hard to come by, but because of it's apparent scarcity, it seems to be in very limited supply to us. I bought the horse butt knowing full well it would almost assuredly be a one time thing but I was buying it to make a handful of finished strops for the experience, the satisfaction and for fun. I have the one strop I've completely finished that I'm using and "testing" and only 7 unfinished strips left. And only 3 hard felt strips. I feel guilty in saying this since I like to share, but I've got too little to do that. Sorry guys. If I think the strops turn out as great as the one I'm using, I'll most likely sell a few on SRP.

Do you have a Tandy Leather store anywhere near you, Kevin? I bought a 2.5" x 50" heavy cowhide strip for less than $10. (I think it was a sale price) and from what I saw from the few I looked at on the hook, including the one I bought, they were flawless. Creamy picture perfect grain surface. I don't remember the weight, but it's heavy and pretty inflexible. But, after less than five minutes of basically making an undulating wave with it in my hands back and forth, back and forth, without creasing the leather, it was already more pliable (read: I think it will be great strop leather). The store nearest me is still about a 3 hour round trip and in a dying strip mall in not the worst by any means, but also not the greatest part of town.

I've heard others advocate ordering such strips from Tandy Leather off the net, but I've heard others say you can get crap leather since you don't know what you're buying until you get it.

I rambled!

If I had a ton of guys say they would like the idea of "one of us" (me) visually inspecting and approving of the Tandy 2.5"x50" cowhide strips first hand and would be interested in buying 22-24" strips for strops, I'd consider buying what they had in stock and just rounding up for gas and time. I don't know that there's enough demand to make it worthwhile for us. To hang them on the rack, they just punched about a 1/4" hole right in the leather about an inch down from one of the ends. If it really is 50", after trimming off that and and cutting the strip in half, finished strop leather would probably only be two strips around 21 or 22".

Chris L