Thread: Is smooth leather too smooth for pasting?

I have a modular paddle strop setup (Supex 77) for touching up with pastes and just added a 0.1 miccron iron oxide paste to my arsenal. All of my pasted strop beds are finely or coarsely napped and I have 1 English bridle strop bed to keep plain for final stropping. I recently acquired a premium calf leather strop bed and was planning to paste it with the 0.1 red iron oxide, would this smooth a leather be fine and ideal to use with the iron oxide or should I use a napped leather instead?

.1 micron particles are very small Why would you wantto use a course leather for them to hide in?

Oh, I was just wondering what the ideal leather surface would be for such a fine particle paste?

Iron oxide paste is very fine, I have only used it on hemp webbing and it works well. I can't see how using the paste on calf leather would improve it greatly, to me you would be ruining a nice strop.

It's a strop bed but I bought it for that purpose. However, I haven't pasted it yet an was considering ordering a finely napped leather strop bed (intended for use with finer pastes) to use with it instead.

My posted strop are both smooth leather and linen and they seem to work effectively, I can’t see it being an issue, but there are less expensive surfaces out there.

Originally Posted by RezDog

My posted strop are both smooth leather and linen and they seem to work effectively, I can’t see it being an issue, but there are less expensive surfaces out there.

I got these strop beds from The Invisible Edge UK and in this case the smooth calf leather was cheaper then the napped leather believe it or not.