Thread: Restore the reverse side

Hi,
My friend gave me a non-working vintage russian-shell strop for experiments. On the front side, he has several deep cuts. It is difficult to restore the face, only if you remove a very thick layer of skin.




Therefore, for the sake of experiment, I decided to restore for use the reverse side of the strop. And it turned out, the strop works again!
First I took off the loose outer skin layer. To do this, I used sandpaper 400 and 600. Then I switched to an abrasive sponge by 3M, 800/1000 and 1200/1500, with water. This is a very convenient tool, because he knows how to keep water in himself during work.



I read somewhere about the old technique: rub the strop with shaving foam with lanolin. The polished strop was covered twice with foam and then the hand rubbed into the skin. Indeed, the strop became smoother and slippery.


I liked how he works. Now this strop is in my rotation, along with Kanayama # 80000 and the strop by Joshua Linderman.

I am quite surprised at how well that worked. Congratulations!
You certainly earned that strop.

Wow, that turned out really well. Very interesting indeed. Thank you for sharing this.

So you basically turned the back side into the front side? Nice work indeed and great save! Most of us would probably have thrown that one away..........

Inspired now. i've got a couple old stops that are in the same shape as that one.

That really does look nice. I restored a vintage Llama strop a couple of years ago and went a little bit too far with the sanding. I used Stirling tallow-based soap a bit like you mention with the Lanolin cream and it did the trick. It was my favorite hanging strop for a long time, but lately I've been using a felt-lined small paddle strop and really enjoying it since I got down the trick there.

Thanks for sharing! Like others have said, it's inspiring.

That turned out so nice it almost looks like a completely different strop! How much sanding did it take to get past those surface cracks? I may have to stop by the hardware store on the way home...

No no.
Where the cracks in the photo - this is originally the front side, with label. It is improperly restored, the damage is very deep. But the reverse side was preserved in its original form, completely without damage. Unfortunately, I did not guess to take a photo of the original condition of the reverse side of the strop)))
Now I turned the strap over and the other side became facial. I spent a little time, an about two hours. I highly recommend abrasive sponges for wet polishing leather - a great tool!

I never have seen or heard of those abrasive sponges before, and 3M is based in my home state!

I brought these sponges from Japan)))