Thread: Is all flax linen created equal

for purpose as strop

as a DIY, found some material by the yard
no where near as stiff nor as coarse as fire hose

will this still work?

please advise

The flax linen component on strops can vary widely in thickness, weave, and coarseness, which can affect at least the stropping feel; the differing effects are a whole other argument. But they all seem to do roughly the same function, which is to clean and possibly debur an edge that has been roughed up a bit by shaving.

Unlike many on here, I don't actually like linen fire-hoses for razors. The ones I have gotten at least are far too rough, hard and coarse for razors IMO, but are great when treated for knives.

That said, many of my strops, both modern and vintage, have a linen component. All have a slightly different feel and give different stropping sensations. Some I like better, though I doubt it makes any difference to the edge. I like to do about 20-30 strokes post-shave before the 50-60 on leather. Everybody seems to have a different stropping regiment on here.

I say it's worth a try. someone suggested using a type of linen used for forming loaves of french bread(couche) once. Seemed like a good possibility though one would have to put a seem on one side because it didn't have selvedge edges. Don't recall if anyone tried it though.

Vintage waxed linen is nice. As long as it isnt pasted. Which many of them were. Scrupleworks is my favorite. Firehose may be treated with God knows what. And I prefer not to think about what it may have been dragged through. Get a scrupleworks. You know it's new and clean and not pasted. That's what I did.

Also westholme uses, a similar to Scrippleworks, really great linen, as does Tony Miller. DryGulch uses a really nice hemp which I like as much as my other linen strops.

Is all cotton the same or all wool the same?

The product varies wildly depending on quality of raw material, the thread count and weave and finishing and workmanship.

There is a difference between cotton linen and Flax/English linen being made from different plants but both will work. I have a Neil Miller strop with an English linen component. The weave on that looks similar to the weave on nylon webbing used in seat belts. I have a vintage strop with a cotton component that looks like flattened fire hose and the weave is like that found on old style cotton fire hoses naturally enough. It's also thicker than English linen being a flattened hose and not a single layer like the English linen. Again they both will work.

Bob

People sing the praises of the Scrupleworks linen strop, but I haven't had good luck with it. From my experience, it seems to sag a bit from side to side, even when pulled taut, and the toe of my razor seems to sink into it in a strange way like a hammock. Best luck I've had with linen has been when it is more like hemp, as in the Solingen dedicated linen strop and the French Rasoir-Sabre strops. These seem a little bit rougher and almost starched in comparison to the Scrupleworks linen, which I will admit feels wonderful apart from my toe-sinking issue.

My favourite is a strop made of replacement webbing for Bruno Mathson chairs that I had made. Stiff and flat. Pretty expensive stuff but very good quality.
Product – Swedish-Design.com

I purchased a yard of linen from my local Jo-Ann Fabric store. It was too thin to make a strop, but I applied some Pellon to the back to stiffen the linen and prevent the edges from fraying too badly. Pello is a non-woven material that has a thin layer of hot-glue, so you use a hot iron to fuse the Pellon to the linen. Then you can cut the laminate to whatever size you desire. You can make several such strops from a set of material. I got about a year out of my strop before it started to fray, so I made another one.