Well he bought it as a "flawed poor mans strop". Thus the flaw was made known. Its not like WD tried saying it was a perfectly fine strop ready to make your edges as smooth as angel's feathers. The strop can be fixed. You can sand it down smooth and progressively go to finer grits and finish with rubbing a little neatsfoot and burnishing with a bottle. Iwasaki had a similar way of refacing strops but it involved soaking in gasoline first and that just seems dangerous.