Thread: How often to clean yah strop ?

Haven’t given my strop much love since 2009 when I got it. Just warm it up with my palm and strop away. There must be some info somewhere on strop maintenance some where....and thanks .

I wipe it with a lightly damp clean microfiber every time I use them.

There was an interesting video recently about Japanese scientist who were testing how much mucus was projected by coughing and sneezing in a laboratory.

What was interesting was the amount of airborne dust that the high speed picked up prior to the test, and this was in a laboratory.

I will see if I can find the video.

I use one of my five strops a week at a time. When being used I palm three or four times per day.
The strop in use is hung in the bath. My wife's scalding showers help them plenty moisturized.

I wipe them down with a fairly damp towel once or twice per year. If your place has really low humidity then damp wiping will be needed more often. Leather needs around 20% moisture. I read this in an article on maintaining tack leather.

Do you guys clean it with saddle soap every 10,000 miles ?

Here is the footage. Look at the airborne dust at 1.25 in the video, just prior to the test.

Dust is everywhere.

(SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus Micro-droplets - NHK World report)

Hey Marty
Damp towel before stropping

I remember my barber flicking water on his strop. I asked here years ago why he did that but got no answers.

What does the water do to the draw?

Never. Leather strop is wiped with the ball of my thumb before stropping. To me that is oiling rather than cleaning.

The only cleaning I do is with a damp cloth maybe once a year. Depending on the strop I may give it a tad of neatsfoot every now and then.

Personally I hate saddlesoap. It was formulated for saddles and really thick tough leather not strops or fine leather. Water and leather in general don't mix.

My opinion of course.

A lightly damp microfiber will make the dust cling to the micro fiver towel so you are not just spreading it around.

It will increase the draw slightly, but there is so little water on the strop it evaporates quickly. I also wipe the linen.

I’m with spendur here. I used to palm rub, and when I’d clean the cloth was a dirty gray. I stopped palm rubbing and when I clean, the cloth is clean. Skin oil has salt in it and that doesn’t sound good for leather or steel. Below is my 8-year old Kanoyama 80000. It’s never had anything put on it, and for the past 3-4 years, not rubbed except one pass lightly before use to remove dust. It’s polished like a mirror and as soft as the day that I got it. Iwasaki said that over oiling a strop destroyed it’s polishing power. From his book chapter for barbers:

‘Some also spread oil on the strop to soften it, but it’s very common to over-apply oil. In such a case, no matter how you polish the leather it will never become glossy, and it will lose half its edge-polishing power.’

Just use it. The only thing that our strops need to be protected from is us.