Thread: Waxing new horse shell strop?

im astounded that a manufacturer using cordovan shell from horween is recommending turtle wax on their strops.. good thing they dont prep their strops before they send them out that way. ive never heard of such a thing before.. yes some leathers are waxed during their manufacture.. i think english bridle is such a leather. and i could imagine using wax to repair/alter a strop that needed it, but i dont think turtle wax counts as wax, and i wouldnt use it on leather.

Kanayama recommends palm rubbing. That is what I do. I've put a touch of neatsfoot on a couple of strops to increase draw. A little goes a long way.

I'll say a little Neatsfoot Oil goes a long way, very easy to over do it.

Bob

Lather it up with some tallow shaving soap,work it in with a bottle,wipe off, let dry.It works to perfection.

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

Lather it up with some tallow shaving soap,work it in with a bottle,wipe off, let dry.It works to perfection.

I've never done that, too lazy, but honedright has said he got very good results with it. He also pointed out that old barber manuals recommend it and give instructions. OTOH, Kanayama says no more than a damp cloth. I'm sticking with the palm rubbing because it is easy and safe.

On older strops it seems to re-hydrate them. and they become more pliable,am certain Kanayamas are treated with some type of natural oils when new,should last a very long time one would think.
I also feel the natural animal fats/Oils in tallow shaving soap,real neatsfoot oil (not compound) and your hand are all basically the same thing

All the cordovan strops I have ever had start off way slick for stropping. Not that that is the worse thing ever. I was told by JimR that the old man in Japan recommended just a very light coat of water on them to increase the draw. I have found that this really works well with daily hand rubbing and before long these strops develop a nice elegant draw with very nice results.

Have fun.

I sanded (up to 400 grit wet & dry) and treated a Scotch Lassie horse shell strop I got on the cheap, but that was because the leather was seriously dried out and started to crack. It still has some cracks on the reverse side, but as long as I don't fold it and treat it with care it doesn't seem to be much of a problem. It hardly has any draw at all now, but works like a charm. A great friend to my Scrupleworks cowhide, with very similar high performance yet completely different stropping characteristics, feel, material, and leather suppleness.

A known, high quality strop manufacturer advised that, unless there's something wrong with the strop or you really don't like it, don't do anything to it (even though pretty much everything you do to a strop is reversible). As far as he was concerned, all a good, functioning strop really needs for conditioning is the occasional rubbing by hand before use; it also works wonders for friction and strop effectiveness.

The second bit are not his exact words (the friction bit), so I guess they are mine, but they were definately close. But he did say for sure that he believes it to be unnecessary to treat a functioning strop with anything besides the occasional palm rub and seriously doubts that a leather strop will actually dry up to detrimental extents in a normal setting (i.e. a house, outside the bathroom because continual exposure to fluctuating moist, high temperatures can be damaging to leather).

Then again I'm not sure of specific manufacturers' leather treatments and how that might require upkeep, as there is apparently a great variety of treatments invloving different kinds and amounts of oils and wax. But I trust the aforementioned manufacturer's skill, expertise and integrity enough to take his word on these matters.

as much as walking horse may know their cordovan leather better than i, i still wouldn't recommend using turtle wax on it.. it may not need anything, and i'd start with palm rubbing, and if after some period of break in time that does not do what you want i would consider more traditional strop treatments first.. consider turtle wax as a last resort, but i doubt you will need it.. they probably wouldnt recommend it if it didnt work, but, people have settled on the more traditional methods because they also work, and seem to work for the long term. i would be very reluctant to treat a high quality expensive leather with something so radical.

Thanks to everyone who's replied. Onimaru said it best, I think: why mess with a strop that's working so well? So, yeah, I'm just doing the hand treatment and enjoying the ride. It's hard to believe that something so slick can do anything to a piece of hard steel, but it does and what it does is giving me a whole new relationship with the blades. The last upgrade to do this was my Naniwa 12k. I had never thought that oh, hones are hones, but I had thought that oh, strops are strops. Nope, some strops really are better than others. This one's a joy.