Thread: Oak fanned English shell, Adrian, Michigan

I think I got a bit excited when adding my cleaner :/ actually what I did was tonight I put it in the washer with my flannel sheets on delicate with oxy only then sandwich in towels and weights. I'm glad I didn't bend it while wet I would have crapped a brick if I had broke it. Thanks sharptonn.

What you want to do, with linen is make sure you get all the soap out of it, soaking over night or all day if needed. Look at your water and you will know when it is clean, (clear rinse water).

A 5-gallon bucket with a cup of vinegar and a long soak, is great for removing all the soap.

It may take repeated, soaking, washing, and rinsing to get a linen strop clean. I think I did 8 complete cycles on the hose, each step 8-10 hours.

Once clean, rolling it will make it soft and flat. I suspend a thrift store rolling pin from my garage door and work the linen over the roller. It will loosen the weave and allow all the crud out from between the fibers on the next wash. In the end the linen will be floppy soft and flat.

I recently made some strops from clean, unused firehose, and it took 2 weeks of soaking, washing, soaking rinsing and drying to get them clean.

They are soft, floppy and flat. They also are nicely, abrasive.

With leather go slow, very slow. As said too much oil is as bad as not enough. Dampen the leather for full penetration or your oil will sit on the top layers.

It took years, decades to dry out, it can take weeks, months to re-hydrate.

Here are a couple of pics, of what you can expect from a properly cleaned and broken in linen strop.

These pieces of 2.5-inch linen fire hose were board stiff and turned rock hard when wet. They are now softer and more flexible than a soft well-worn leather belt.

BTW the roller also break in a leather strop just as well, but do make sure the leather is properly hydrated and go slow in getting the leather fibers to loosen and become suppler.

I will try to post some photos of the roller set up, it is just a 2-dollar rolling pin, a couple eyebolts and lengths of para cord.

That's a beautiful fire hose strop Euclid. It's true, it can break when wet. I've broken linen hose after washing when it was not dry yet, hard as a rock, and I bent it to reposition it in the bucket. The fibers snapped a little along the edge. That's all it took because when dry it just frayed out from there. But the ones that didn't break got nice and soft flexible when fully dry. I've got some vintage hanger hardware on the way and may make another.

Thanks Euclid I'm gonna take my time for sure its cleaning up nicely and I don't want to ruin it. Thanks so much for the visual aide

Here’s my roller set up.

A thrift store rolling pin, a couple eyebolts and about 4 ft of cord.

By golly that's genius!

Here's a "Tool for Treating Razor Strops" patent applied for Oct. 16, 1922. It seems the toothy side was rubbed on the strop to remove any buildup of crud and then it was turned over and the handle was used to smooth the leather. The designer recommended it be made from glass. More info here Patent US1490766 - Tool for treating razor strops - Google Patents

Originally Posted by xiaotuzi

Here's a "Tool for Treating Razor Strops" patent applied for Oct. 16, 1922. It seems the toothy side was rubbed on the strop to remove any buildup of crud and then it was turned over and the handle was used to smooth the leather. The designer recommended it be made from glass. More info here Patent US1490766 - Tool for treating razor strops - Google Patents

Now that is interesting.. I can not imagine that made of glass maybe wood I can afford that I might actually work on that a bit tonight and this weekend I have some free time so this will be a great time investment. Thanks for sharing tuzi!

Originally Posted by ejmolitor37

Now that is interesting.. I can not imagine that made of glass maybe wood I can afford that I might actually work on that a bit tonight and this weekend I have some free time so this will be a great time investment. Thanks for sharing tuzi!

I look forward to seeing your results!