Thread: Linen on stropping

Just need some info on stropping on linen. I bought an old vintage Russian strop off of ebay. The linen says extra heavy Scottish linen its i believe from the 30s. Its not the typical fire hose, but its pretty thick its about 1/8" thick. Ive only stropped using a dull practice razor.

Man this thing is not a fine weave, its kinda rough/bumpy and loud. When i mean loud its zip zip zip ect.. I kinda afraid to put my shaver on it, because its so rough. Will it ruin my edge, because of the roughness? I getting pretty decent at stropping im about a year in now.

If there's no damage or foreign crap in the linen, then it won't hurt your razor, now you may hurt it, but the linen should be fine. Tc

A picture of the surface might help.
A lot of fabrics, including fire hose, are pretty darn zippy.
Never had it hurt anything, though.

It used to say Scottish linen extra heavy in gold leaf, but when i cleaned the writing came off. Its not a tube or hose material its 1/8" thick.

I have a SRD strop with a non linen secondary strap. It has a seatbelt/nylon/plastic feel to it. It too is very aggressive sounding, but it does a good job. Like TC said, unless it's contaminated of the surface has been compromised, it should work well.

All linen components I have had have seemed very rough and loud. They all seemed to work great.

I have two strops, one with a natural linen back which is very smooth. The other has the poly webbing, which is similar to what you have. It is very loud and bumpy. It has never harmed any of my razors, but truth be told, once I got my natural linen I never go back to the poly webbing.

Originally Posted by Wayne1963

I have a SRD strop with a non linen secondary strap. It has a seatbelt/nylon/plastic feel to it. It too is very aggressive sounding, but it does a good job. Like TC said, unless it's contaminated of the surface has been compromised, it should work well.

No it was nasty when i first got it, but i cleaned it up, and now its spotless. Thanks for the help!

It looks good to me in the pic. As long as its clean you shouldn't have an issue. And yes, by the way it looks its going to be zippy. But that fine. I have a couple linen strops that are zippy so I washed them in the clothes washer. They shrank up some but that was ok. But now they are a bit softer. Less zip, but still zippy. I feel better about them now but I dont think it changed anything beside how I feel about them.

Looks like its good to go. How stiff is it? I have a couple that look similar and are really stiff. They still work good though.