Thread: strop with black coating

So the picture is making me dizzy. It says something shell.


Gonna be a good one. What is the secondary like?

Yeah, it's hard to read, but it says Arab Shell. There was no secondary, so I plan to try and find something. Not sure where one finds such things, though....

just an update: the saddle soap and mink oil have made a pretty incredible difference. After just one mink oil seasoning, the strop is already quite supple. I'll see how it is in a couple weeks, but I doubt I'll need to do more than one more seasoning. This turned out to be a much easier project than I expected! Good thing I have a couple other projects strops ready for some TLC.

When it comes to oiling strops, less is best, IMO.

Neetsfoot seems to be less forgiving than mink to me. I overdid a few with the neetsfoot, but not with the mink oil.
I think the smaller increments/effects with mink oil are easier to control. At least for me.
Have yet to try Slawman's Ballistol. Will try that soon.

I used this strop to shave yesterday. In the end it only needed two sessions with the mink oil (two weeks apart) before the leather was nice and supple. The stropping went really well. It's a pretty fast draw, but it definitely seemed to get the job done! I used a King Cutter that Glen had honed last year, and the shave was very smooth.

This means that I now have 3 functioning strops: English Bridle, Boar and this one (Arab Shell). I'm sure it will take a while for me to learn the different feels of the strops (and probably different uses), but I'm super excited to dive into this!

I'm debating if I should pair one razor with each strop for a while, to get the feel of the individual strops, and to see the longterm effectof each on a razor. Thoughts? Honestly, I'm not sure I'd have the discipline....

One word, Ballistol! ballistol.com

Originally Posted by Slawman

One word, Ballistol! ballistol.com

Yes, I had looked into that after hearing so much about it. But it seems to be pretty expensive to ship to Canada for some reason, whereas mink oil is everywhere, and cheap. And a lot of people on this forum also swear by mink oil. Anyways, it seems to have done the job - I absolutely love using this strop!