First off, I love the Rickyism's. It still surprises me when people talk about TPB as most in my area don't know about them.

Secondly, I recently made my own strop. Nothing special just some 3x50" from Tandy and cut to size. To condition it or break it in I popped it in the drier for 30 minutes with no heat. Just let it tumble and bounce around. Then immediately I took some Aussie leather dressing (I believe it has beeswax as the main ingredient) and smeared it on there and let it sit for a while. I then rubbed that off with my palm and got all the residue off. It was quite supple and had a nice draw to it and really probably didn't need any thing else done to it but I decided to put some neetsfoot oil on it too. Now it is a perfect strop with which I spent about 30 bucks total investment on it and actually it made two strops so really thats like 15 bucks a strop and its just as good as anything else in my opinion. So maybe you can do what I did and maybe that will help.