Thread: Canvas or Linen?

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

Originally Posted by bokaba

Which is better? Or only leather?

I don't know

I like to strop on the pasted canvas side first and then on the leather side of my Tony Miller strop

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.

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)