Thread: a leather belt to sharpen razor?

hello everyone,
i am new to the use of a straight razor and have not yet purchased a strop. would it be possible to sharpen my razor with a good smooth black leather belt?

first off you posted in the wrong area so this post will be moved to the stropping area, and to answer your question yess you can use a leather belt to strop your razor, note. stropping the razor does not sharpen it it just refines the already shave ready edge.

I would be hesitant to use a belt. I'm not the only person to discover that leather belts can contain a lot of particulate grit and put a really nasty edge on a straight razor.

thats true BK but i used a spare blet when i first started out for the first 3 weeks and i managed to do fine. I would sugesst that you look into a strop soon but in my openion a belt will work out for now as along as its real leather and has a smooth texture.

Originally Posted by Deerhunter1995

thats true BK but i used a spare blet when i first started out for the first 3 weeks and i managed to do fine. I would sugesst that you look into a strop soon but in my openion a belt will work out for now as along as its real leather and has a smooth texture.

The problem is that a lot of "real leather" belts below, say, the $50 range are actually made of ground up leather glued into a sheet-- and often times grit from the grinding process is mixed in, even though you can't feel it. Basically, a belt is a very hit-or-miss strop.

I would recommend using newsprint instead, until you can get a real strop.

Just because something CAN work doesn't mean it's a reliable method or a good idea. There are many impromptu items I would rather use for stropping instead of a belt - old jeans, newspaper and my palm or arm are just a few.

But ultimately, strops are a purpose-designed piece of equipment, and there is no substitute.

Yea your best bet is to get a strop and be done with it but if you must use a susptitute, Take news paper and strop on that that also gve a verry verry fine honign to your razor as the ink as a verrry high grit size.

I moved your thread to the Strop section to help garnish more replies.

Thread moved to Strop section of the forum. Redirect in the Post Shave section will expire in a day.

I would not use a belt to strop for two reasons. First, there can be a gritty substance in some belts that may ruin the edge. Second, belts are usually not wide enough to strop easily.

Hey Tom

You can use a belt as a strop but as has been pointed out there are some problems with this but what I would do is find a belt that has a rough leather side that hasn't been treated with anything. Then you take wet/dry sand paper and sand it smooth starting with a grit around 300-400 and ending around 800-1000 and this should give you a nice surface to strop on. Just remember while sanding to keep your paper wet other wise you will end up with grit from the sandpaper in your leather.

Now with that said I would suggest going with a strop like this 2" Leather Strop which you can get for about the price of a nice leather belt. Or this http://www.whippeddog.com/-----$19---Poor-Man-Strop-Kit-with-Leather-Strop/ which you can get for the price of two good belts. And both will do a far better job then a sanded down belt.