Thread: New Kanayama - Surface imperfections

I just looked in my emails, and I called someone named Eric Frank at the retail arm of Horween that was called "Tannery Row".

I have no clue if it's still in business. That was october of 2012. I got to them by going to horween first, and they gave me the contact information for their retail group.

Back then, the commentary I got was also that you couldn't get leather from horween retail, and I saw that several places (not just here). I'd always call them to check first if you want it, and not rely on people online telling you that it can't be gotten retail. They just don't have the easily available shells in an online store or anything.

It helped that I wanted to use mine for a razor strop, because no 2 shells don't usually have a clear run 23-24 inches long, but because I had talked to them for a bit about it and brought up razor strops and said I was an enthusiast, they went out of their way and found me a no 2 shell (1.75 square feet is the size of a no 2 shell) that was a little longer and narrower.

If you do manage to get to them, even if they still have a retail group available, expect to wait until they've satisifed their regular customers, and they won't be able to tell you when that will be, you just make your order and then wait to get lucky.

I will say this, it makes a heavenly strop. The best broken in strop I have ever used is a long clear horse butt strip that I made myself, but it was no treat until it was broken in and slick. This horween is its equal. Most other retail strops I've used have not had the same ability of either of those two to maintain a well honed edge as sharp and smooth for as long as either of those.

Horse butt is easy to find, but not necessarily easy to find in 24 inch clear runs, and it's not suitable for the most part for professional strop makers because their clientele isn't going to tolerate the answer of "hey, use your regular strop for two months but then strop a junk razor on your horse butt strip strop ever day on top of that until the horse butt strop loses the gritty feel and becomes slick".

(having those two strops among every other, I still use the horse butt on a day to day basis. I'm saving the horween for something, and what that is, I have no clue - i know it has a finite life span, and the horse butt seems to go the other way - starts off rough gets smooth. The horween looks to start off smooth and then the surface treatment wears away and it loses some of its slickness).