Thread: How long does it really need to be

Originally Posted by DduckyMark

I have wood, I have some leather, I want to upgrade from pasted balsa strop to a pasted leather bench strop. Problem is my leather isn't very long between 12 and 18 inchs. I woul like 2 sides to it so I can use my Chromium Oxide and M Iron Oxide on one block to save space. Is 12 inches doable or should I wait for a bigger piece?

Make it as long as you can with one side for now and when you get another piece of leather add it to the other side.

This is a bench strop I bought from Classic Edge a while back....works pretty darn good. No issues. Might give you some ideas on length or design.

The Professional Strop

I've spent even more time looking at premade options. I have seen bench and board strops between 18 inches long and 10 inches long. I have seen paddle strops between 16 and 6 inches long and hanging strops from 12 inches up. I've also seen that in every type of strop I've seen everything from 1 inch wide to 3. I might make my strop hone size plus however much length I can squeeze out of it. Is there any benefit to used pasted leather instead of pasted balsa?

I think it comes down to preference tbh. A lot of people use paste balsa and some use pasted leather. I've never used pasted leather, only balsa.

You'll come up with a design that matches your needs. Think about what be the best for you and your style of stroping. Some people like wider and longer strops..... and some like narrow or shorter strops. All is going to depend on what your style is.

So, 12 inches of leather for a bench strop is just fine, 3 in width is ideal but any width will work. Make the wood base a couple inches longer on each end to give you something to hold on to, a non-skid base makes stropping easier or use a piece of rubber drawer liner if gluing leather to both sides.

Leather vs balsa performance will vary depending on the paste. Generally a pasted balsa strop will be more aggressive than leather.

Wood, leather, paper, nylon, fabric, and foam will all perform differently with the same paste. A lot depends on what you are trying to achieve.

My pasted strops are all around the 10-11 inch size. Keep in mind that you won't be doing a ton of laps on these, so you can do shorter strokes and get the job done. I would make what you have, and see if you like it. If you don't you can always get your hands on some more leather and make bigger ones.