Thread: Question on Linen.

I have an old strop that seemd to be almost unused. The surface of the strop seemed uneven (not the leather itself) as though a waxy material had seeped out of the leather in a speckeled fashion. Some of this was on the inside of the linen. I used some very fine sandpaper (could have used finer) to remove the bumps of wax. in some ways wish I hadn't remove as much as I did, as I beleive it was part of the origional leather treatment. Once it was smooth I worked the waxes remaining back into the rest of the surface where there was less.

The linen was quite stiff and also almost unused. I washed the linnen for the sake of washing it, to clean it and remove wax in places, and it did not remove all of the chalk in this case. After using the linen and leather a few times it seemed my edge had become rather rough, and i decided to take a stiff brush to the linen to brush out all of the chalk that I could.

has anyone else found the chalk to be disagreable? what was the purpose of the chalk? how was a chalked linen intended to be used?

My guess and I'm reaching here is the chalk being a rock though soft adds to the stropping an order of abrasive which a plain linen would not have.