Thread: Strop for a newbie

Originally Posted by ShavedZombie

I beg to differ. ...
The reason I support getting a more expensive strop first: If it cost you more, you're more likely to take your time and baby it. If it cost you five bucks, meh, if it cost you 50-100, you do NOT want to mess up. It helps.
Cheers,
Jeremy

This is a good point. You just aren't as invested in less expensive items. I used to lose my cheap sunglasses and pens on a regular basis (like weekly). So I bought some fairly pricy sunglasses and a couple of nice fountain pens. I have had them all for years.

Originally Posted by Lazarus

RupRazor has some relatively affordable strops. The $20 Filly is a good first strop. The more expensive strops such as those found at Straight razor Designs have $25 leather replacements for when you cut your strop irreparably. And yes you will probably cut your first strop.

+1 on the above.

I just set out to price and assemble my own strop with leather from
Tandy and a local cobbler. When you add in hardware to hang it
and an impossible to find quality linen canvas back you will be hard put
to end up with a price less than you see from our sponsors. In fact the
more I priced and inspected leather the better my opinion of ALL the strop
vendors out there became.

The SRD replacement feature also lets you swap out one type of canvas
for another. And while most beginners do not slice a strop irreparably
some do so this is a bonus to factor in.

The CrOx on the back of the Filly is a bonus. A jar of your own CrOx will
cost most of the price of the strop by itself and since a single jar lasts +55
years this is a good thing since you will not need to refresh the CrOx for a year
or two anyhow.

My recommendation start with a Filly it will last years.
True you will want a spiffy fancy one some day but the Filly
will fill in the roll of a pasted strop at the time you embark on
honing your own.