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I am a safety razor convert who's trying to resurrect an old straight razor.
I just received an eBay leather strop. Instead of having a leather strop and a fabric/paste strop it has two leather strops. One is thicker than the other.
Do you have any idea which one I should strop the blade with first? Does one of them get paste put on it?
I have some time to kill before I need to know...the 3000/10000 grit stone I ordered is probably two weeks away until delivery.
Thanks!
Welcome to SRP Gitch
Post some pics if you can mate
It may help those who do know strops a lot easier & those of us who don't, it will also help later if we come across it
keep the smooth clean side for stropping finish,, but pictures would help to see what you have ,, have you ever honed a straight? tc
I'm with the others and pictures would be helpful. Some strops, both vintage and new have a smooth leather strop for finishing and a suede finish strop for sharpening. The suede is in place of the linen, cotton, or nylon component that is the more common second material.
Hi and welcome. Do both sides have the Illinois stamp or just 1. If just 1 that is the finishing side most likely.
Wow! Thanks for all the responses!
Below are the pics. eddy79, only the top side of the thinner leather has the Illinois stamp.
Tcrideshd, I have not yet honed or sharpened a straight razor. I have read some general advice about restoring a straight razor and watched a number of geofatboy (Shave Nation) videos on stropping and shaving with a straight razor.
The razor I have is a Geneva Cutlery I picked up at a second hand store for $4. I think it's a great opportunity to get my hands dirty and experiment without a huge investment.
The strop part with the stamp has a smooth top side with a sheen on it. The under side is soft and supple, as is the inside face of the thicker leather. The bottom side of the thicker leather is weathered and rather rough. If that's the side I'm supposed to use with the razor I will need to recondition it somehow (if possible) or figure out another kind of strop.
Here are the pics:
Attachment 180972Attachment 180973Attachment 180974
The side with the stamp is the finishing side. From the wording genuine shell it is a good quality horse hide strop and worth cleaning up and using. The other outside piece when flipped over is the piece you would normally use first. You haven't posted a pic of that so it is hard to give advice but from what I can see it looks like a keeper.
I didn't think I could get good enough pics to show the area I'm concerned about, but below are my best efforts:
Attachment 180979Attachment 180980
Each end of this side are smooth to the touch and look much like the top strop. This middle section is kind of rough. Can that be worked on? Is there a spot on the forum dedicated to strop maintenance?
Thanks again for your guidance, Eddy!
you could try lightly sanding the affected area with W&D paper. Starting at a medium grit and work your way up. You just want to remove a bit to get past the roughness not make it a suede. Do a search for strop restoration there will be heaps of info. It doesn't look to bad. A light sand a (very) little neatsfoot oil and a smoothing and hopefully it should be good again. It does look like part of the problem was drying out. The neatsfoot will help this. Just a couple drops worked in with a rag at a time. Go slow this may be a week or two in the doing. You can add but is hard to remove things once soaked in so do a bit and leave and come back to check in a day or two
Cool! Since I'm waiting for my honing stone to arrive I have time to work on this. I love bringing old used things back to life! I'll post again as I go along so others can check out what I've done.
Welcome to the strop side of wet shaving gitch414 [emoji4]
ฬє ђคνє ς๏๏кเєร [emoji38]
gitch414, welcome to SRP. I am going to make a hard statement. Until you have shaved with a pro, or Mentor honed razor, all you will do is ruin the edge and the geometry of your razor. Reading about it and watching some videos is not a good grounding for success. Case in point: I am a Mentor, I can do basic honing. I hit a brick wall in my honing after several successes. I arranged a session with my original Mentor to figure out the problem. It's all in the bevel setting. I repeat, it's all in the bevel setting. And add to that I was shown how to identify problems with a razor and its edge that had not occurred to me before. Even a slight, almost unseen frown tot he edge will give you problems if it isn't corrected. If the blade is even slightly warped a totally different approach needs to be taken to get a decent bevel. I know now enough to know I know little of what I should know. Do yourself a huge, HUGE, favor. Get the razor honed by someone that knows what they are doing. And if you have honed knives don't even think there is a comparison. Razor honing is far more complicated and satisfying once learned.
I was afraid of the wrinkles in that center part, I saw somewhere if the strop had been tightly wrapped it could ruin it with wrinkles. But after a couple rounds of saddle soap and one application of neatsfoot oil it really smoothed itself out! I then rubbed the remaining rougher spots with my fingertips and it went almost completely away!
I'm very encouraged by this progress. I'll post photos with a more complete description so others can see.
Here are some pictures of my strop and how I cleaned/oiled it.
Attachment 181431
A local farm supply store stocks the Fiebing line of products in the horse saddle area. The saddle soap was about $4 and the neatsfoot oil was about $5. And I think both will be more product than I will ever use.
Attachment 181432Attachment 181433
The front and back of the strop after cleaning. The saddle soap worked much like shoe polish. I wet a clean cloth (old t-shirt, I believe) got some soap on it and cleaned off both sides.
Attachment 181434
After the strop dried I took another cloth and put a small dot of neatsfoot oil on it. With this one dot I covered the entire side of the strop which was so dry.
Attachment 181435
Here is that same side after two applications of oil over two days. Between the oil and rubbing out wrinkles with my fingers this side of the strop is as smooth as the other honing surface. Well, not as smooth because the other side is the finer honing surface. But it feels about as smooth.
I'm pretty pleased with the outcome. After two more days the strop has absorbed the oil and the surface looks less saturated with oil than this last picture shows. I think this strop is ready for use!
You can get too much oil on the strop. I have one that oils my razors as I strop. As soon as the surface starts to warm up the strop sweats oil. It still functions but isn't really ideal. I hope you stop a little sooner.
For those interested, this article on getting neatsfoot oil OUT of leather may be helpful, if like RezDog and myself you have applied too much of it and it is leaving residue on your razor when you strop: How To Undo A Mistake With Neatsfoot Oil? - How Do I Do That? - Leatherworker.netQuote:
Originally Posted by RezDog
