Thread: Cupping - Help a Guy Out

Lets just say you washed a Roo strop pretty vigorously with soap and water... only to discover that your strop is now seriously cupping.

How do you fix it?


Asking for a friend.

I'd sat, oil it and sandwich between two flat objects. Sounds as if its shrinking. Maybe hang it with weights on it. Like drying a hide.

Originally Posted by earcutter

Asking for a friend.

That's funny

Maybe the edges have dried before the middle so doing the sandwiching between two flat objects and after a complete drying it might lay flat again?

Clamping between two flat objects is what I've read in the past to fix the problem. Be careful not to add too much (neatsfoot) oil although the amount of oil does help determine the draw of the strop, a few drops spread evenly is what is recommended.

Good luck, keep us posted!

Originally Posted by DoughBoy68

Clamping between two flat objects is what I've read in the past to fix the problem. Be careful not to add too much (neatsfoot) oil although the amount of oil does help determine the draw of the strop, a few drops spread evenly is what is recommended.

Good luck, keep us posted!

Thanks - Will do. I rubbed ... uh, I mean my friend rubbed a little saddle conditioner onto the Roo and rolled it up for a couple days. When he let her hang yesterday, she started cupping again. Tonight I'm going to throw a little Neatsfoot on and lay it on the floor with some heavy items on top for a couple three days.

ARG!

Arg the end of the day, it's just as well I'm fighting it like this. Somehow, it conditioned a little weird (previous to my cleaning). The top half was lighter than the bottom. It made for a bad strop - so I stopped using it. I'll fight the good fight and let you all know.

So here’s what the strop looked like after cleaning. I was mortified.



Clearly there’s no way I could use it in that state. So, I:

A. Tried laying it flat with 40lbs of ammo on top to flatten it out. Didn’t work.
B. Rolled it around a soda can backwards. Didn’t work.

C. I conditioned it a bit and then put some elastics around it so it’d bow outwards. I think that might have worked... but man, the strop looks “funny” right now. I think if I had tightened those elastics any more, the leather would have ripped.




But O.M.G! The draw is now perfect across the whole strop! I’m in love with it again! It’s like I just got it!

Which knowing my luck, probably means i’ll Slice through it tomorrow.

Yay?

Put it between some paper towels and try ironing it, I got some extra Neatsfoot oil out of a strop I got at a meetup and it also straightened it up a bit

I purchased a 3" wide roo strop that had some cupping even when new. I have not been able to get rid of all the cupping, but one thing that helped running the strop over the corner of a square towel bar. The diameter of a soda can is far too large to work. When you pull the strop back and forth across the towel bar, you are stretching the leather where it is tight and also producing a slight grain direction curl toward the back of the strop, countering the cross direction curl toward the front. The cupped area is loose already, so it is not affected by this process. I was not able to eliminate all the cupping, but it did help.

So long as the cupping is convex when looking at it, I’m all good. Concave and it’s useless.

All I know is, after conditioning it the last time with Dubbin Grease and forcing the convex with elastics, it’s behaving, and has the perfect draw. The perfect draw! Somehow, at some point, I must have conditioned it unevenly. That’s no longer an issue! Woot. I’m stocked - assuming it behaves.