Thread: Lather used on strops?

Getting interesting thanks for all of the input. Please feel free to add any strop conditioning horror stories and or successes.

Linen strops are no problem. Some hot water and soap and a good scrub brush and you can get them looking like new again.

Of course when you have a leather strop with issues like creases that simply won't come out the nuclear option is to saturate it in water then let it air dry slowly and then condition like crazy. Usually the strop will be OK but often times it will dry with seriously bad looking stains in it which are permanent. But that's only used when you are faced with pitching a strop cause it's unusable otherwise. No it's not good for the leather. Kind of like when yer fruit tree has had it you basically poison it and it will produce the best crop ever...then it dies.

From another thread
the following is recommended by Star shaving to help break in a Big Daddy strop,

For Best Results use water and soap on the leather, such as your shave brush with shave soap. Also use the palm of your hand to rub the leather strop occasionally to help keep the leather pliable. When the leather is not pliable use Neatsfoot oil and when the leather is dirty use Saddle soap. Use a lint roller to keep the Felt strop clean. We have replacement leather or felt for the "OVB" strop if you ever need to replace the leather or felt part of the strop for any reason such as cuts put into leather or felt strop from stropping. That is why we use Chicago screws in making the "OVB" strop so that the strop can be worked on easily if ever needed.

After I did the soap & bottle trick mine also improved tremulously more than just the hand rubbing.
I don't remember getting this information sheet with mine but my nephew got the same info as above from their site when he bought his

Never used anything but hand rubbing on my Roo but

Cheers D

Well I just recovered my first strop I ever bought. My mother was spring cleaning and uncovered it in a box buried deep in the chasms of her garage. I haven't seen this strop since around the mid 80's. It is an Illinois #127 so I ran over there to recover it. I wish I could find the little 4/8 cv heljestrand that I bought which started all this fascination with straights but not yet. So to get back to the point I scrubbed the dirty nasty little strop with saddle soap as some good people have mentioned and sanded all the horrible nicks I made in it and i think after some neatsfoot oil treatment after its good and dry it might be ready to rock.