Thread: can you rub down the edges of a strop?

Hi all,
being a newbie to using st8's & stropping, my strop has a fair few nicks along the top & bottom edges(if i'm honest alot) & feels quite rough & i am now trying to avoid taking the razor over them when stropping,do you think i would be able to rub down the edges to take away the roughness from the nicks or am i aswell buying a new strop???.I'm sure alot of you must have done this & was wondering what your solution was.

Thanks for your input........

Fine sandpaper will do the job on the really small nicks and for larger ones you can glue the leather down and then sand with fine sandpaper to smooth things down.

Then just give the sanded/glued areas a rub with some neatsfoot oil or Fromm strop dressing to recondition the leather and you're good to go!

thanks stubear

Some pics would be helpful if you can....I'd like to see the leather...On some you can use a pumice stone.

I've had the same issues. Unless you have an enormous cut in the leather that compromises the toughness of the piece you are safe. You just have to use a pumice stone of some fine snadpaper to smooth down the nicks and then rub in some neatsfoot oil or, if you haven't any, you can use some nivea hand cream (from the blue tin). Rub it in until the colour is even and some watery liquid starts to appear. Then you'll just have to wipe it down and let it dry out.
Hope this helps.

pumice stone worked a treat on the small nicks & glued the not so small & rubbed down,
Your help is much appreciated.......