The stop was bone dry this morning, so I did not let it dry ‘2-3 days’, there was just no point in it. The weather yesterday was mid 80’s F, breezy, sunny, and 30% humidity, so it wasn’t going to get any drier than it was this morning.
I lathered it up and rolled it with a bottle 3 times. The purpose of this is unclear from the translation. I suppose that it could be for 2 reasons, if you can think of others, please let us know.
1. It stretches and flattens the strop one final time, with the soap lubricating the fibers. The strop is flatter at the edge ‘bead’ than my user, which is a good thing I think.
2. The lather is intended to be left in the strop serving as something like the Dovo white paste and similar stuff that we see in vintage linens and cottons. I rinsed it out. Soap is not in itself harmful to steel, but it can hold moisture as we know, and if you don’t clean all the soap residue off your razor, it will patina. I didn’t want to have to clean the razor (again) after stropping on canvas so I rinsed the soap out. I was using MdC which rinses very cleanly. I can always re-lather it or rub it with the bar soap, and maybe I’ll do that on one side and see if it makes a difference vs clean.
Observations and going forward:
The strop is now as limber as my machine washed strop.
It did shrink about 1/2” or 12mm during the process. It’s the same length as my machine washed strop though I kneaded and stretched that one as it dried.
The edge bead is flatter than my user, probably due to the mallet - I could tell that the edge bead flattened after being tapped with the mallet in step 2.
There’s not much difference that I can tell between machine washed and this process except that the edge beads are flatter. You could always do the mallet thing and roll it with the bottle while it’s damp out of the machine.
The end cap did not come off.
I’m undecided whether to raise a nap with the Atoma plate, but probably will. It mostly wears off over time anyway.
Any suggestions, ideas, comments?