Thread: What makes a strop shiny ?

About the stropping progression: I have played around with Latigo leading to horsehide, and yes, this is a nice stropping progression from my experience.

Here is the strop I was wondering about, the Spanish Bridle on the left is the shiny one, its the one I have used for many, many months and has had one light treatment of Fromm's Strop Dressing, the extra piece on the right was one that i ordered as a replacment if needed and it was the last piece he had, it's never had a blade touch it and it stored away in a plastic sleeve.

Not sure what the issue is here, but if you added a strop dressing, or generic leather conditioner, then you probably introduced wax in dispersion to the leather surface. That would certainly add shine and slickness. Something to strop through at the end of the day.

Yes...most conditioners have oil and wax in them.
Oil to penetrate the leather and reduce friction betwen the fibers lowering the risk they would friction break...
Wax reduces surface friction thus surface ware.

Some degree of discoloration is normal with the use of any conditioner or oil.

Originally Posted by Brontosaurus

Not sure what the issue is here, but if you added a strop dressing, or generic leather conditioner, then you probably introduced wax in dispersion to the leather surface. That would certainly add shine and slickness. Something to strop through at the end of the day.

Originally Posted by ovidiucotiga

Yes...most conditioners have oil and wax in them.
Oil to penetrate the leather and reduce friction betwen the fibers lowering the risk they would friction break...
Wax reduces surface friction thus surface ware.

Some degree of discoloration is normal with the use of any conditioner or oil.

So is a strop conditioner/tretment somthing that should not be added,the reason I gave it a light treatment of the Fromm 1907 conditioner was the leather looked a tad dry, I added very little and the draw never really changed, the only noticable thing was after a few weeks after doing it the strop took on a sheen