Thread: Sanding My Strops

Originally Posted by timberrr59

Today I watched my barber sand out a cut on his strop with one of those abrasive brick-like rust remover/polishers sold at gun shows. There are several makes of them. Knife people also use them to clean up old rusty blades. It did a good job on the strop. It was comforting to see that even experienced strop users make a slip from time to time. At least I now know how to take care of such misfortunes. He had used it on some of his razors to remove rust and stains. I would be careful using it on an etched blade, although it is claimed not to scratch the metal. I dunno.

I'd be careful with what type of those sponge like sanding pads you use as some are impregnated with aluminum oxide and you might end up turning your strop into a pasted strop.

Gentlemen,
someone mentioned an old barbers trick of scraping the strop with a pair of scissors, I did it to my old Keen Edge strop, on the fine side, it sure works and increases the draw nicely, I later shaved with an old Cadman razor and got a really nice shave. I may just the strop a light touch with some fine sand paper, and a quick rub with some RM Williams saddle dressing.


Cheers

Gordon

When I use my strop for very first time, I made many nicks on the strop. I use sandpaper to remove nicks and as a side-effect got very smooth and nice surface. Only difference is that I used 1000 grit sandpaper.

--
Z

awsome info thanks!

a pumice stone works as well...

how bout using 180 grit? or is that too low?

I wouldn't go lower than 1000 grit IMO.
Yesterday I used 1200 and 2000 and a pumice stone to get out a couple of nicks.
Looks like brandnew again.

Originally Posted by zib

a pumice stone works as well...

+1 ... As do diamond plates. I feel very uncomfortable with the idea of sandpapers leaving grit behind even after supposed cleaning.

Ill have to give this a try on my first strop that is all nicked up. Thanks.

I have in the recent past gone from 320 to 400 to 600 to 1000 grits and got what I consider very good results.
YMMV, if you think you might need to, give it a try, use a light hand, and clean any and ALL grit from papers off the surface before useing.

Thanks for reading, 'have a good one fellow face scrapers!!