Thread: Kanayama Cordovan Strop workshop video

Speaking of apprentices
I was an apprentice mechanic when I left school.
I am pretty comfortable under the hood but the skill that i learned first was how to make a decent cuppa.
There wasn't cell phones back then and i was too oily to touch one anyway.

Most of my mechanical learning was probably when I was a tank driver. The drivers(bilge rats) are responsible for the maintainance of their tank, that's where i learned that in a pinch when you're in the middle of nowhere - Apricot Jam makes a pretty good instant gasket to get out of trouble.

Originally Posted by STF

Speaking of apprentices
I was an apprentice mechanic when I left school.
I am pretty comfortable under the hood but the skill that i learned first was how to make a decent cuppa.
There wasn't cell phones back then and i was too oily to touch one anyway.

Most of my mechanical learning was probably when I was a tank driver. The drivers(bilge rats) are responsible for the maintainance of their tank, that's where i learned that in a pinch when you're in the middle of nowhere - Apricot Jam makes a pretty good instant gasket to get out of trouble.

Yes, A young guy who once worked well for me showed me a citation from the Marine Corps for when he recovered and brought in a huge truck with catastrophic electrical failures by using jumper cables and a 9 volt battery from someone's radio!

Well, I DID order 2 of these 'pound into submission' canvas strops from A-Frames.
Free ship and arrived from Hawaii in 3 days.

All bedecked in Red Imp and Certifyd. Should be a task for a slow day.
I am of the opinion E&Co's strops were for the American market and came right from Naomi's shop.

I guess anything is possible. At some point he might have supplied them. Certainly the Red Imp leathers were not from him. They are nothing like his strops. My set came with true linen and again was not a Naomi piece.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

I guess anything is possible. At some point he might have supplied them. Certainly the Red Imp leathers were not from him. They are nothing like his strops. My set came with true linen and again was not a Naomi piece.

Never said Certifyd strops were all the same. Certainly not ones with Naomi in the logo versus E M MFG Co.
Why has virtually every NOS Kanoyama strop I have seen come in these Red Imp wrappers?

WHO knows or can find anything about EM MFG C0?

WHY did a large pile of pressing plates with lots of hardware, razor makers, barber's supply names including EM MFG Co Certifyd 'Blank Check' plates turn up on an ebay auction many years ago from a seller in Hawaii? A-Frames?

It's not hard for me to think that components were not shipped to Japan to assemble 'Made in USA' strops in custom pressings, materials, hardware, and secondaries to be returned to US markets for distribution and sale.

No. Kanoyama would not have put his name on them. No, not always as good workmanship/ materials involved.
Simple contract labor. Would have made him lots of income back in the day.

I can imagine way too many 'Red Imp' wrappers being supplied and thus being used even up to the end of Kanoyama production.
E M MFG Co.....An enigma?

I imagine that you’re right about the wrappers Tom, they either had, or had a license to use the markings, and just continued to do so.

I have a ‘Llama’ strop that’s also stamped ‘H&H Grinding Company, Cleveland OH’. Naumi is in his 90s, so if he started making strops in his early 20’s, that’s about 1950. I’ve always assumed this strop was older than that but have never found any information in H&H Grinding Company. All Google wants to do is sell me something even when I put ‘history’ in the search term.

In times past he probably produced his strops with some custom script or just sent them foreign and some outfit or outfits got them put the familiar artwork and packaged them and sold them no different than razor makers who made pieces for retailers and put the retailers names on them or maybe co produced like the puma ducks.

Well, if he was 92 now, he would have been making in '52 when he was 20? I have one Russian dated by the Japanese barber in '41.
I always thought it was a family business before him. May be I am not reading the date right?

Here...A Russian shell which has his hand in it I feel certain. Signed and dated on back by Yamamoto the barber and the secondary sure looks like Naomi's work.
I did buy it from a Japanese seller.
Next to a Red Imp on the right. Check out the bottom stamps..



Indeed both are stamped EM Co and certainly don't have the signature hardware that Kanoyama's do.
The Red Imp has the blue fabric stamped on back.

This stuff is intriguing to me

It seems to me somewhere in the distant past on this site someone somewhere did some research on this EM Co and it was was fleshed out who they were. it's probably in the strops forum. All you have to do is find it. I reckon it's when we were still Straight Razor Place.

As a matter of fact there is a thread from 2009 around page 128 I think where a member has a LLama strop with a bottom mark from some beauty and supply shop and he questioned if it was a Kanayama and it was put to JimR who contacted the maker and he said it was not his strop.