Thread: Does anyone make their own stropping paste?

For linen strops, the less than .01mm gemstone at a very small % addition would be good to add to a 18th Century Military Blanco for use on cross belts and gaiters. ( Yes I have done it! and used a 10% of all the ingredients, It need a bit more tallow, the original was made with soft soap.)
Here are the originals and my comments


The following if from Roy Najecki, of the 40th Foot:

From: Standing Orders, Forms of Returns, Reports, Entries, etc. of the Queen's Dragoons Guards; 1795 -

"Take 6 pounds of the finest pipe-clay, pound it very small, put it in a tub, and put to it about 5 gallons of cold water. Let it remain for two or three days, stirring it now and then. Then take 6 ounces of gum dragon, and put it into 4 quarts of boiling water, and cover it up close for two or three days. When the gum is well dissolved, take a fine hair sieve, and strain it into the pipe-clay, and keep stirring the pipe-clay well all the time you are doing this. Then take half an ounce of stone blue, and dissolve it well amongst your colouring (this gives a clear gloss to the belts). Let it all remain one day longer, and it will be fit for use, putting it on lightly and evenly with a sponge."

From: The Discipline of the Light Horse by Capt. Hinde, 1778 (pg 559) -

"A Receipt for the White Belts. Take 1 ½ lb of Pipe-clay, 3 Quarts of Water, ¼ lb of Best Glue, ¼ lb of White Soap, Boil the Soap and Glue first, till dissolved, then Mix it with the Pipe-Clay, and Boil all together for a Quarter of an Hour; when Cold put it on a with a Sponge in the usual manner, and when Dry Rub it with a Glass-Bottle."

All these ingredients: pipe-clay, gum dragon, and stone blue, are still available. Pipe-clay is the white material used to make porcelain in your sink or toilet and is commercially known as Kaolin. Pottery supply firms sell kaolin. Harness makers know gum dragon by that name but it is sold as Gum Tragacanth. This mucilage substance is used to burnish the edges of harness leather. It is available from The Leather Factory, Inc.

(1-800-472-3306, item #2264) and other leather craft firms. Stone blue is hydrated copper sulfate and can be found in the plumbing dept of home centers such as Home Depot. It is used to eliminate roots in septic pipes. There are several brands and they vary in purity. Root Destroyer brand (made by Scotch Corp 214-943-4605) is 99% Copper Sulfate Pentahydrate and costs about $9 per pound. Yes, it looks like blue stones, and they can be easily crushed into a powder.

Buff faced ( They used a buff color for cross belts and gaiters) units often would use pipe-clay with a buff tint. The tinting agent, buff ochre, is still available from jewelry manufacturing supply firms.

I've worked up the first recipe and tried it, but my results didn't meet my expectations. Perhaps my kaolin was not white enough, and the pipeclay came out very watery. So I put that project aside for when I have more time.
I later finished the experiment and added tallow and a proprietary fine abrasive. the linens are not as aggressive as the Grey TI strop dressing but are very smooth on the order of a ChromeOx or finer. TI used diamond and CBN to make the hard to get grey tube dressings.
__________________________________________________ ___________________________________
( a comment posted in rebuttal)
"""Ich Dien!
Posted by B. Jones, RWFIA at 6:01 PM
1 comment:
coldstreamer said...
Stone Blue is not copper sulphate, but in fact Lapis Lazuli. The artificially produced stone blue (Ultramarine) used to be commercially manufactured in the UK as "reckitts blue" for whitening laundry. it is present as blue flecks in washing powder and is used to colour correct white ball clays used to manufacture tiles and sanitary ware. It is now made by Holliday pigments in Hull, UK. See the wikipedia article on ultramarine for chemistry.

Analyis of clays used to make clay pipes seem to show to it be a white ball-clay, rather than kaolin, which woudl have been referred to as china-clay, not pipe-clay. The clays used, used to be found between coal measures, but in the later 17trh and 18th centuries theey were mined from surface deposits. The closest modern analog would be a pure, iron-free white ball clay such as WBB Minerals "pure HV" mined in Newton Abbot in the UK. This white ball-clay is stickier than kaolin, which seems to need more gum."" """
__________________________________________________ _____________________________________
And the later experiments have worked out well. I used Mrs Stewarts Laundry Blueing ( Vintage)!
~Richard