Thread: Beginner strop on the cheap

I am just starting out, have a couple razors I am polishing up before I send them out to get honed, found a decent brush and some shaving soaps, all I am missing for the bare essentials is a strop. I know I can use some newspaper, cardboard, etcetera... but in the mean time I would like to figure out a better solution.

Being a student, husband and father of two, I am hoping to find or make a decent strop on the cheap. I found a couple decent ones on eBay but as always within a minute of the close time they jumped from $15 to $50... My next plan was to buy some 3" leather straps cut them into 18" long pieces and affix them with epoxy to a planed 2x4. That way for about $25 I could make three and have a couple extras to use pastes and compounds on.

Any thoughts?

I did the same and they work great. I used contact cement instead of epoxy and it worked very well.

Bench strops are a good way to learn good stropping techniques. You might want to check out the Whipped Dog web site. Larry is a great and helpful guy to those of limited budget. If you don't really have room for a bench strop what I did was make a hanging bench strop. I have a couple of old Russian shell strops and I got a piece of fiberboard, 1/4 inch thick. Cut to width and about three inches shorter and put it between the leather and the linen and used Velcro straps top and bottom to hold it in place. I am staying with bench type strops because I have a very heavy hand and using a bench strop means you have to learn a light pressure quickly is you don't want to dull your razor almost immediately.

I second the whipped dog motion. I picked up one of Larry's poor man strops when I started straight razor shaving (I think you can get one for less than $15) and I still use it. In fact if it ever wears out, I think I'd get another one since it's such a terrific strop. I doubt it'd ever wear out though.

Nice recommendations. I have an SRP strop, but I might pick up a Whipped Dog to use while I still work on my technique.

FWIW I've heard people have good results using old jeans instead of buying a cotton strop. Take some old jeans, grab SWMBO's sewing machine and get to work.

Maybe stitch some jeans to some felt then glue the felt to the other side of the board?

Thats what I did too. Its easy! For a hanging leather strop, buy scrap piece of leather, cut it to desired length, add a d ring to top of strop and rectangle "ring"? to bottom. easy as pie. take a look at some images from google to help in the design. For a Denim paddle strop I used an old pair of jeans, I upholstered it to a
1 x 6 board, because its what I had in the garage, then stapled the denim to the back of the board, if youve ever reupholstered a chair its the same thing ... I made 2, one is use with crox... Theyre very ugly to look at but do a great job. I'll see if I can post some pictures later. Good Luck

I'm glad to see that you didn't even mention those $15.00 strops you see on ebay. The alternative methods you're looking at are probably the way to go until you can afford a decent one.

Thanks for all the ideas and opinions!

Probably the biggest reason I didn't mention looking at the "$15 eBay" strops was that:
1. Most are in China
2. They are half the width I would like to learn to strop with, screw that "x" stuff while learning!

I got a hold of a western wear store here that will sell me two straps of 18"x3" for $5, which is much more comforting that buying some scraps off eBay. Plus SWMBO is happy about this route.