Having a overly elevated opinion of my abilities and a short attention span my approach to most projects is to dive straight in and learn as I go from all the mistakes I make. Having been targeted by the heavy artillery in another thread for seeking to clean and sharpen on old Sheffield razor without first sitting at the masters' feet an imbibing their undoubted wisdom, here I go again - with some trepidation. I am, however, genuinely interested to learn, despite often appearing otherwise. I think philosophers call this approach dialectical.

I have on old 1 3/4" Biber strop which I have as good as slashed to pieces in my hamfisted attempts to learn how to strop properly (I am now starting to get the action and remembering only to roll the spine, not the edge) . Horrified by prices of half decent new ones I have bought a 2" wide strip of 1/8" thick cow leather. The minimum order quantity has given me enough to make 3 strops.

MISTAKE NO 1 - I should probably have bought 2 1/2" or 3" wide leather, but I have started so I will finish.

I intend to reuse the metal swivelly bit from the old strop and attach it to the new one using some Morocco offcuts from an old bookbinding project. At the other end I am thinking of forming a handle from 3/8" ply, fixing the leather a deep groove in the ply and holding it in with wooden dowels.

The top surface of the leather is very smooth and appears to have been polished or burnished in some way. I was thinking that this may need to be opened up a bit so that it can hold the paste. Any thoughts on whether this is needed and if so what to do? A bit of rubbing with some fine grit paper perhaps?