Which is better? Or only leather?
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Which is better? Or only leather?
I like vintage linen followed by leather. I use the linen off of an old Red Imp and follow with one of Tony's Latigo/Horse strops. In that order. I do 50 linen & 15 or 20 each on the leather. After the shave I hit the horse for another 10 to get any micro crud out of the striations .
I had fairly marginal results with my TM canvas strop. I couldn't tell if it helped or not.
I then applied the Dovo white paste, and it supercharged the strop. Definitely a nice refresher before hitting the leather.
Or you can get by with just leather, depends on how fussy you like to be with this stuff:o
Me, I'm a linen before each shave for 25 laps, then 50 leather kind of person....
I have never really gone for pasting a linen strop, all I want from it is to clean off the micro crud on the edge so I a stropping a clean fresh edge on the leather....
For a recharge on them I have only used the Dovo white paste and was not that impressed.. Now I just use white chalk after a stiff brushing once a year....
I have both Linen and canvas and prefer the linen though I don't know if performance wise there is any difference.
I've started using the linen too, as a pre-leather strop, but I'll be dipped if I can feel a remarkable difference in shave quality. Maybe I need to try a chalked linen stropage before my leatheration.
This may be getting too complicated for this one of demonstrably limited capabilities. :confused:
:hmmm:
I have the TM linen/horsehide and I can't tell how much I am getting out of the linen. The horse is awesome as a finishing strop or a start to finish for my full hollow 6/8 and less. I also use the Illinois 827 and the linen on it is more like a plastic impregnated canvas. It's as stiff as frontier whiskey and it gets discolored as I use it and I can tell a difference in the edge longevity if I use the Illinois linen. I wash it with lather once every couple of months but the leather and horsehide get a hand rub down every day and nothing else except a stiff brushing every year.
I really like the hard linen on my Illinois. You can SEE that it's doing some burnishing (I couldn't with canvas) and I can feel the difference in my shaves since I upped the laps on the linen side.
Not all linens are made of linen, and likewise canvas can be made out of almost anything.
I think folks who have actual linen linens, untreated, may still find differences in the weave. (just a guess)