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Hi,
I have an extra wide dovo strop in addition to one of their more traditional strops.
The extra wide strop feels significantly stiffer making it more difficult to get nice blade contact.
Is there anything I can do to "loosen up" the leather?
THANKS
D.
Working the leather with your hand is often the best way to soften up a strop. The oils in your skin treat the leather and the rubbing helps soften it.
The other thing you could do is get some strop dressing (Fromm or similar) and apply a small amount of that which will do the same thing. It will also increase the draw on the strop.
Rubbing the strop with your hands each day before and after use is a really easy and cheap way to soften the leather though, so I'd recommend trying that first and get som Fromm if it really wont soften up that way.
Big +1 with Stubear, I have many strops, and have only used my hand to condition them. You'll read lot's of stories on here about folks applying different things to their leather strops for different reasons. I don't agree. Bottom line, it's Leather...
As Stubear said, Try rubbing it down daily with your hand. Not after you've washed them, wait until your hands are oily, then rub your strop down, 1 or 2x a day. see if that helps, if you have to use strop dressing or Fromm's, be very sparing with it. It's easy to stain your strop...
Eventually they all break in by themselves but yea oil from your hand works or the dressing path also you can use a rolling pin or bottle and use light pressure and just go up and down. That works too.
You could try the method that was originally used to soften the incredibly stiff russian horse hide strops - fix a rounded bar horizontally at a suitable height, loop the strop over it (face side uppermost, ie rough side against the bar) and work the strop back and forth under pressure, pulling it so as to make a sharp angle over the bar. You need to keep the strop very taut, so the bar should be supported at both ends and be fixed, not free-turning. It helps if the strop is a one piece one!
Originally performed on plain cut strips, the work was so arduous a machine was made to do it. However, the leather Dovo uses is nowhere near as stiff as this and should need far less manipulation. Even so, be prepared to do it for a lengthy period. Also watch the surface of the strop to make sure that it is not having an adverse reaction - the softer downy/finely-napped (ie, machine abraded and regularised) surface of the Dovos I have seen shouldn't be affected, whereas a full surfaced strop might begin to show signs of strain.
Regards,
Neil