Strop restorations

Evening chaps,

I picked up some old strops in a box of old stuff from a long-gone barber's shop. Before I go in heavy-handed, I'm wondering what the thinking on restoration in the forum is.

Here is the haul:
Attachment 291914

The hanging strop is some sort of napped leather, with fabric on the back. Both sides are in pretty poor shape and dirty. On the plus side, the leather is amazingly not too dried out and looks salvageable. However, there are a few loose threads in the cotton/linen on the back, and some serious nicks in the leather: Attachment 291917 I'm thinking first glue up the nicks with leather cement, then clean the leather with saddle soap, then start the process of moisturising. Is that a reasonable order of service?

Then there is the paddle strop. It is an interesting one, it has a leather side and a sprung wooden side:
Attachment 291918

With this one, maybe just clean and condition the leather, but what about the wooden side? It is designed to be used simply as plain wood? Luckily, the wood still has a surprising amount of spring in it.

Finally, the loom strop:
Attachment 291920

This one is in the worst shape of all, there are some big nicks in the leather, the leather feels very dry and hard, and the fabric is dirty and worn. Would I be looking at taking them both off and re-tensioning them?

Thanks!

Don't ask me , ive been restoring one for over a year now..
Probably should check on it :/

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Originally Posted by JOB15

Don't ask me , ive been restoring one for over a year now..
Probably should check on it :/

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Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm in no rush!

I used leatherique cleaning solutions (for car seats) and sanded out the slices/nic's with 400 grit glass paper which was a mistake because the little glass particles embed on the surface of the strop.

Mine is hanging in a cupboard on a coat hanger and it has a lot of draw, too much I'd say.

There was a period when I would strop on it daily to try and condition it back to life.

Hope this helps :)

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Originally Posted by JOB15

Hope this helps :)

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Yes it does!

I've read as much as I can on the forums here. And I'm no stranger to leather. But for example, I'm still a bit unsure about how to wash the linen on the hanging strop without getting the leather wet, or how to re-tension the loom strop. And how should that sprung paddle strop be used? Can replacement linen be bought for strops?

Let's see if anyone feels like chipping in.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Montgomery

Yes it does!

I've read as much as I can on the forums here. And I'm no stranger to leather. But for example, I'm still a bit unsure about how to wash the linen on the hanging strop without getting the leather wet, or how to re-tension the loom strop. And how should that sprung paddle strop be used? Can replacement linen be bought for strops?

Let's see if anyone feels like chipping in.

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Not in your area, but here's a couple of chips:
SRD Replacement Leather
SRD Replacement Webbing, Fabric and Hard Felt
Strop Replacement Parts

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Originally Posted by Diboll

Not in your area, but here's a couple of chips:
SRD Replacement Leather
SRD Replacement Webbing, Fabric and Hard Felt
Strop Replacement Parts

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Thank you! Very useful, but by the time I've bought those bits I could have bought the new version of this strop. Also, this one is 45mm wide, and the parts here are wider. Next post shows where we are up to...

So, this is where we are up to with the hanging strop. Of course, this is an exercise, this isn't a valuable or particularly good strop, but the idea is to get the feel of things in case a really valuable old strop comes my way at some point.

Attachment 292718

Attachment 292719

Not much done, washed the fabric side with laundry soap, and cleaned the leather side with saddle soap. Also glued the cuts with leather cement:

Attachment 292720

... and started moisturising the leather by putting leather conditioner on the reverse side. Gluing the cuts was particularly successful.

It is in surprisingly good shape, I guess it wasn't used for 30, 40, maybe 50 years, but it seems that the compound that was used on it was quite greasy which protected the leather all those years in storage. It still needs a bit more moisturising, which will be done gradually. One question, the leather has some sort of strop paste on it, with the loupe, I can make out shiny silver or white particles. What kind of compound might have been used? I guess that with a strop which has been pasted, all that can be done is to play safe and assume it has been used with the coarsest compound.

The fabric side has some damage:

Attachment 292721

I've been thinking about whether and how to repair it; options seem to be:
i) replace the fabric
ii) repair the hole with a needle and thread
iii) somehow patch the fabric
iv) leave it as is and use it until it disintegrates
v) leave it as is and not use it

In terms of repair, i) and ii) would be best, but lots of work. iii) is difficult to execute while maintaining the consistency of the fabric, though not impossible. iv) is possible, but I'll probably go for v).

Get some Ballistol! It is the best leather restorer I have found and it is good for so many other projects in your shop. Check it out at ballistol.com .
I use it on my vintage shell horse hide strops and all my leather goods. It just works.

Slawman

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Originally Posted by Slawman

Get some Ballistol! It is the best leather restorer I have found and it is good for so many other projects in your shop

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Mmmm... I'll have a look at that, thanks.

Won't help with the fabric problem though...

I decided to update this thread, partly to get everything in one place, and partly to avoid burdening other threads with absurd levels of detail on restoring strops that were probably not worth bothering with by any 'reasonable' metric...

So, with respect to progress on the second of the strops in the opening post above, the convex paddle strop, this was discussed in this thread:

https://sharprazorpalace.com/strops/...strop-why.html

This one is waiting for a decision on what to paste the two sides with.

With respect to the first strop in the opening post, the hanging strop, this one has come out really well:

Attachment 318723Attachment 318724

A few things to say: one of the questions earlier in the thread was about the frayed section in the linen. I came up with a solution which I'm very happy with. I firstly put all the loose threads to the back of the linen, as you would with a pull or loose thread on a sweater; then the back of the frayed section was lightly covered with contact adhesive, which was left to dry for a few minutes before being pressed between some wood in the vice. The idea is to stop the loose threads from moving, but retain some flexibility in the fabric and avoid affecting the surface. It worked pretty well, which I'm glad about, because this is my favourite of all the linen strops I have:

Attachment 318725

After gluing the cuts in the hide, the hide was softened, sanded and scraped. I believe that with this one, the hide side is on the reverse, which should in theory mean that there is less of a problem with sanding thickness off the strop, if my understanding is correct: The reverse looks like this:

Attachment 318729

I have experimented with two finishes, a very fine nap, finished with #600 wet and dry, and this finish wiped with Chamonix Milk. The draw is very heavy with the fine nap, so at the moment I'm sticking with the slicker finish. The napped finish is as above, the slicker finish is like this:

Attachment 318727Attachment 318728

The strop has been pasted in the past, and earlier in the thread I did wonder about whether the abrasive could be removed. I've since found it to be really useful as it is, it is in the ball park of my Herold loom strop which was bought pasted with green paste; that is to say, a good level of abrasive for after honing, or for a touch-up, but not for regular use. I am still wondering what the strop has been pasted with, whatever it is kind of sparkles like tiny specks of glitter. You can just about see the spots in this picture, which also shows the napped finish:

Attachment 318730

[edit: seems the sparkles of the abrasive have been lost with the loss of resolution when posting the picture]

Overall, a good learning experience, and a very useful strop.

Another strop story which I'm pulling into this thread...

The story so far is here: https://sharprazorpalace.com/worksho...st1900522.html

The most useful response to my request for advice was from @Euclid440:

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Originally Posted by Euclid440

You can try flooding it with oil and see if it will absorb more. I have one old strop that has so much oil you can barely read the stamps on it. The strop was stiff as a board and stamps were deep, when I started oiling it.

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I would try adding more oil then scraping smooth, before you give up on it.

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So I tried more oil then scraping. As mentioned earlier, the surface of the strop was almost powdery when I started, and on scraping some of the surface came away as a sludge. After this, I thought I would see where I was up to, and gave the strop a quick sand with #600 wet and dry. There were still cracks in the leather, so I decided to sand with the strop over a rolling pin, in order to chamfer the edges of the cracks. After a wipe over with Chamonix milk to clean the leather, I ran a microfibre cloth over the strop, and it was not catching at all. Here it is:

Attachment 318862Attachment 318863

And hopefully this shows the surface of the leather:

Attachment 318865

To this point, it was all just to see where we were up to, and obviously I tried it with a razor. To cut a long story short, it is really good. Even though it has been oiled and softened, it is thick old leather and is still fairly stiff. Regardless, it is the best finishing strop I have out of four (one other vintage Biber which has been heavily sanded, one Herold I bought in 2006, and an almost new Herold). This strop puts a noticeably keener edge on a razor than the other three. This was not what I expected.

Something else I did not expect is how rough the fabric backing is. There are hard fibres protruding from the weave which feel like splinters of wood, the weave is rough, and the whole thing is coated in something waxy. But it seems to strop fine. I can't say it improves an edge greatly, but by the same token, it does not seem to damage it either.

I know that the accepted wisdom on this board seems to be that a strop with cracks in the surface is probably finished. However, I also know that many members don't worry too much about nicks in a strop as long as the edges of the nicks are smooth. All that said, I'm guessing the final test of whether a strop is any good is... whether it is any good, right? In any case, I'm truly surprised that this strop turned out so well, with the cracks and all, but I'm certainly going to continue to use it.

Thanks again to @Euclid440 and to the forum!

Got a new batch of vintage strop projects... Attachment 320271

The old Biber looks to be a venerable old strop. I've done a bit of work on it since these pictures were taken, and there is good news and bad news. It was seriously filthy, covered in black crud filled with bits of stubble, so it didn't belong to anyone fastidious. Bad news is that the dirt hid other problems, the strop is also heavily nicked on the left side as well as the right. Also, it seems to have been used heavily, because it is pretty worn, thinned along the right edge, right down to almost a knife edge at the point where all the nicks are on the bottom right. The hanging hooks are also heavily worn, from this and the amount of soap and hair on it, I guess it was used in a barber shop.

Attachment 320272

But, the good news is that the leather is in excellent condition, a clean with saddle soap and a bit of neatsfoot, and after settling overnight it is as soft and as flexible as you could wish. When I first handled it, the leather felt heavy, cold and clammy, so there was still plenty of oil or fat in it.

A question for anyone reading, this strop has the two-hook type of hanging hooks, does anyone have a rough idea when these gave way to the ring type?

Attachment 320273

My guess is roughly pre- and post- WWII. Interesting how the configuration and hardware of European strops is all different to the US-style strops.

The loom strop is an interesting one, named 'The Royal Strop', it has a strange configuration of springs and straps to tension the leather. Seems like a lot of work for questionable benefit:

Attachment 320274Attachment 320275

The leather on this one looks fine, one sided is pasted with a greyish abrasive, seems to be the stuff I have found on other German strops, when you look against the light or with magnification it appears as lots of tiny silvery reflective particles. This side has some big nicks. The other side is very clean, looks like it will clean up nicely.

The Biber paddle is one of those with slots cut in the wood to make it more flexible, not sure how useful this is either, this one has warped a little so the stropping surfaces are a bit wavy. The green side has been over-pasted with that greyish stuff, which is ok, not a big deal, I think the greyish stuff is a bit coarser, but I can see myself using that side as is. Sadly the plain side also has the greyish stuff on it, I'll need to think about what to do there. I'll never get it all off.

The Biber story continues to be good and bad...

First thing was that all the stitching was totally rotten:

Attachment 320301

I knew it was worn, but I didn't realise at first that it had lost all its strength:

Attachment 320302

So, that had to be re-sewn:

Attachment 320303Attachment 320304

Not the neatest, and the last of some really old thick linen thread I had. It would have been neater if I had not sewed over the old thread in places, I was cautious about dismantling it completely. Probably didn't need to be so cautious.

That done, on to the strop itself. It came up nice and supple pretty quickly, but in addition to the heavy wear down one side, it has either been pasted at some point, either that or contaminated. I did find a useful new (to me) technique for cleaning a strop, which is scraping while wet. Essentially, I lathered the strop with a thick shaving soap lather, scraped gently with a scraper, repeating about ten times in each direction. I think it has worked to clean the strop and get *most* of the abrasives out. It looks nice now:

Attachment 320305

Sadly all of the gold lettering got lost in the cleaning process. Not sure there was much I could have done about that, both leather end pieces had lumps of sticky black gum stuck to them, that could only be removed with rubbing alcohol.

The linen cleaned up ok, still yellowed, but it is almost 100 years old:

Attachment 320306Attachment 320307

So, where to now? I got most of the abrasive out, but it still leaves a few scratches on a polished bevel, so I'm not sure it will ever be a finishing strop. If I could get it clean, the best idea would be dismantle it again, and turn the leather around 180º in the mounts, so I'm stropping on the unworn edge. But unless I can get it clean, that isn't any help, and received wisdom is that it is almost impossible to get an abrasive out of a strop once it is there. I could turn the leather around and paste it, but I already have plenty of pasted strops. Last idea would be to buy a completely new piece of leather and mount it in the old hardware with the old linen. This could be an appealing idea. Let's let this one sit for a while...

Great job with the restoration! Love the look of a vintage strop.

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Originally Posted by Toroblanco

Great job with the restoration! Love the look of a vintage strop.

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It does look good, and it was a good exercise. Sadly I think the leather itself it almost too far gone. I did manage to get *almost* all of the abrasive out, by lathering and scraping gently, which I feel is a good technique.

I'm going to let it settle for a while, wait for the oil to dissipate a little, then I'm going to try stropping on it. Whether it strops well depends on enough of the top layer of the leather being present and serviceable, and the abrasive contamination being sufficiently removed. If it does go well, I'll take the leather out and reverse it lengthways, so I'm stropping on the less-used edge. If it does't go well, I'll think about replacing the leather - shouldn't be difficult, and as you say, it looks cool.

You can make the oil penetrate deeper into the leather by applying water with a damp cloth or rag. Instead of having to wait days for it to happen naturaly. Just aply it evenly and wait for it to dry. Do this as many times until you reach the desired effect. I learned this from a saddle maker, works like a charm.

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Originally Posted by Toroblanco

You can make the oil penetrate deeper into the leather by applying water with a damp cloth or rag. Instead of having to wait days for it to happen naturaly. Just aply it evenly and wait for it to dry. Do this as many times until you reach the desired effect. I learned this from a saddle maker, works like a charm.

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Yes, I also find this works very well. The first oiling of this strop was after cleaning with saddle soap because it was so filthy, the oil went on straight afterwards, and within a day it was floppy and flexible. In actual fact, I don't think this strop had ever really dried out, the leather felt dense, cold and clammy right from the get-go, so it did not take much to bring the flexibility back.

Here's an interesting one, a very small loom strop:

Attachment 320916
Attachment 320914
Attachment 320915

In pretty good shape, just a clean with Arko lather followed by a bit of neatsfoot:

Attachment 320917

Sadly, it has a little of the ever-present sparkly paste on it. Maybe not enough to really matter. At only a touch larger than a razor box, perhaps it was a travel strop. No makers marks, unfortunately.

I have a few paddle strops and I have never even thought about trying to bring them back from the dead. I guess that I have to consider it now.

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Originally Posted by MrZ

I have a few paddle strops and I have never even thought about trying to bring them back from the dead. I guess that I have to consider it now.

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And please show us!

Here are a few strops picked up over the last half year in the UK and Germany:

Attachment 324092

Far right is a padded paddle strop with ivory handle in dark green Morocco leather case. Not sure how much I'll use this one, it's just a cool strop. I'd have thought this one was late c19th.

Going left, a large paddle strop, The 'Encore' Strop. I'd put this one around 1900, definitely no later than the 1920s. This one has red oxide or similar caked heavily on one side. The rosewood handle and metalwork are really nice, as is the case.

Then a 'Biber Echt Wild-Juchten' which does not appear to ever have been used, and has the remnants of a paper label three quarters the way up. This one has the double hooks rather than the later ring attachment. I'm not sure when these double hooks went out, but I'm putting it no later than 1950, quite possibly earlier.

Going left again, a black strop by H. Eicker & Sohne, Solingen-Wald, marked 'Prima Juchten' and '222' on the back. This one looks like it was a great strop at one point, but it has suffered and has quite a few big cuts in it. 1950s? I have a small Biber strop which originally had this black finish on it. As with this one, the surface on that one was shot, but once the surface was removed, it turned out to be a nice little strop. Not sure if this one is worth trying to salvage. It more or less came free, so nothing lost.

To the left of that one, a very simple strop, marked 'Made in Scotland' and 'Genuine Shell Horse'. This one belonged to a man who lived in Nairn, Scotland, and who died in 1954. As is often the case, it seems families often get rid of these personal items when the original owner passes out of living memory. I bought it from his grandson.

Then a fabric-backed strop marked 'Ama' and 'Prima Rindleder'. The fabric backing is a herringbone weave, and looks like it might be hemp rather than linen. This one looks very much like it was made by Herold, not too recent due to the way in which the fabric joins the leather, but not too old, due to the vinyl not leather end pieces. 80s-90s? A few small nicks, and has been folded so is creased, but it should be fine.

You can't really see the two at the left, both have been folded and have set in that position, so I want to be very careful about softening them before unfolding. The one at the top is marked 'Aristine No 6' and 'Shell Horse Hide', and belonged to a man who died in the early 70s. This one has the double hooks, so I'd put it 1920s-50s. The one at the left at the bottom is marked 'Sherwood Single', 'Genuine Shell Hide' and 'Registered' with a medallion on the handle. I'd also say very roughly 1920s-50s.

These are my first shell horse strops, first impressions are that the leather on all three is in pretty good shape. The Scottish one has very little wear, and still pretty soft and flexible in parts, but there is also a part which is very hard, so we shall see. The Aristine has a fair bit of wear on it, the Sherwood some wear. The Biber one looks great, it doesn't look to have been used and still has part of its label on it. It is very dry and dusty, but feels ok, still flexing to some extent.

So quite a bit to be going on with! I think these will satisfy the inner strop restorer for quite some time.