Thread: Hemp

Originally Posted by RezDog

Hopefully Victor will chime in here at too.

Ha! Beat you!

Hemp fiber is very similar to flax fiber. The original canvas (cannabis) was hemp fiber and considered the very best sail cloth before synthetics. The strains that make the best fiber are useless for drugs and visa-versa.

The fabric side of my Dovo strop is made of hemp.

I have used the herringbone weave for a lot of strops. If you trim any pieces that stick above the weave to keep it smooth, and just run your hand over it pretty quickly, it will shed most of its extra fibers and works very well as a strop element.

After seeing the thread last month about hemp as strop material I had to try it myself. I am a big fan of linen, expecially Neil Miller's (PBOH) wonderful English linen but feel that hemp should be a bit more abrasive. I bought a few yards of 2.5" webbing from Hemp Basics (the HempShop offers 3" webbing Hempiness pure Organic Hemp Webbing - The Hemp Shop but the shipping is a little steep for those of us on this side of the pond.)

The only prep I did was to run it over a dowel as Utopian did on the pipe and singe the fuzzies off. It did not occur to me to hand rub it, duh. My SO has a comb-like device used to remove "pills" from sweaters but it didn't do a thing for the hemp. I clamped it in a hanger from a vintage strop and I just grab the loose end between index and social fingers to use it.

In use the sound is almost identical to that when stopping on linen but feels just a touch "rougher". As said, I am a linen fan but now I cannot honestly say that it is any better than the hemp. A real one-on-one trial would require using one razor for many, many shaves stropping on each material so I'll just stick with the subjective opinion that the two give comparable results. Since the hemp is a bit easier to find I suppose that gives it the edge.


rs,
Tack

looking into this last year also
and all accounts noted that the Hemp fiber webbings I could find where to course & abrasive for Strops
and had similar problem with minimum orders that made it not viable for me, so stuck with the Roo leather only for my traveler

My Westholme strop is flax linen in a herringbone weave. I love it. Taken a look at the link provided above for the hemp and I fancy trying it. A strop may be my next project.

It seems like forever ago that I started this thread. I have finally gotten around to making a strop with my hemp webbing. I ordered two pieces, one is herringbone and the other was a canvas weave webbing. The herringbone weave is thin and soft. I gave it a quick wash with a lift soft for hand washing delicates. I doubt this is a delicate fabric but was more concerned with how easy it would rinse out. I hung it to dry, rubbed the fabric to loosen it up a little and installed it in my strop. It is a little zippy, in fact I am surprised it is zippy at all because it seems so soft. It works great. The canvas strop is a bit different of a story. It is quite course. i put it in a large pot of water and boiled it, dried it and tried to work the fabric to loosen it up. I have rubbed it vigorously back and forth over a pipe, and with a little force. It has softened some nut is still too coarse for me to be comfortable to use it as a razor strop. It does soft each time I work it over so it may make it there in the end but i can't say I would order it again as a strop material, unless it is magic once softened adequately.

,,just don't roll it !!!





,,,,,,,,,yes I know that was a juvenile reply,,, but its been a slow day.

I have read the more it is used, the softer it gets. I would imagine given time it would be on par with linen.

The only linen strop I have is a vintage. It is so zippy I cannot stand to use it. This one has only a very slight zip to it. I like it. I think if it gets a little softer with time I will love it. Perhaps the canvas weave one will get there with a little more work. I was actually thinking maybe I need something more than a steel pipe to break it in with, something with a slight edge.