Thread: Red Latigo and Black Honing leather

I received some Red Latigo strop leather, both smooth and diamond pattern, from Handamerican yesterday and Keith De‘Grau also sent a piece of their Black Honing leather. Keith explained that “the black leather is a 'corrected grain' leather, it has a little drag and works best on razors & knives that really just need that extra little thing that you can't describe.” So last night I made a couple of hanging strops out of the Red Diamond and the Black Honing leather and tried them out this morning. On the black leather I gave 20 passes with a razor I had just finished honing (a Puma 88), but hadn’t stropped yet. I then stropped it 20 passes on the red diamond. The diamond pattern creates more drag than the smooth, but I would think that would reduce the number of passes needed by creating just enough friction to heat the edge so that it flattens easily .

I then shaved with the freshly honed and stropped blade. It felt like I had given it 30 passes on a pasted strop (the only paste I use is TI on a suede strop). It cut my whiskers like a hot knife through butter, with no drag or irritation. Next I’m going to try the pasted and black strops in concert and see what the results are. IMHO these two leathers would be great additions to anyone’s strop collection. If they worked this well on a freshly honed blade they should work equally well on maintaining the blades in my rotation. Thanks Keith.

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