Strop Dressing

Hi

I'm pretty new to straight razors and will be buying a strop soon. Do you actually need strop dressing or is this a marketing gimmick? I haven't seen in mentioned in the stropping info that I've found on SRP so far. Does a new strop need any special treatment to break it in?

Thanks,

Charles

I am under the impression that most strops sold in this day and age don't need any treatment when first received. Some people may like to mess with them when they get them to get them how they like them but I think almost all strops sold by reputable outfits (i.e. Tony Miller, SRD, Dovo, Illinois) are good to go right out of the box.

Years ago strops would need a breaking-in because they weren't completely finished. There were/are all kinds of methods for doing this. The old Yahoo SRP documented and detailed a lot of these procedures as that era had pretty much come to a close. Those procedures seemed to also work well in many instances to breath life into an older strop. Some strops you just couldn't save.

Hopefully some of the guys who like to "work" their new strops will chime in here and detail what and why they do it. For the most part though an new strop is good to go.

Hope that helps.

Regards,
EL

Quote:

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Originally Posted by elbonator

I think almost all strops sold by reputable outfits (i.e. Tony Miller, SRD, Dovo, Illinois) are good to go right out of the box.

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I agree.

I made the mistake to apply the dovo yellow strop paste, the dressing, to my first strop and it became worse.
Don’t use any dressing if you buy a good quality new strop.

Dressing is really for worn strops or strops that become dry and even then the oil from your hands is all you really need. Some new strops can be real cardboardy and if you don't like that some dressing can help but even that doesn't mean they don't work just fine.

Mostly all you need to do is rub your hand accross you strop to help break it in and keep it feeling nice. I do about 20 or 40 strokes on all my strops whenever I thinks about it when I'm in the Lu.
And yes, I'm one of those who play around with the draw of my strop when I recieve them, Somtimes just rubbing my hand, sometimes, using Fromm Dressing or Neetsfoot or if I think it might help, Mink Oil. It's a personel thing, mose people agree to leave well enough alone and just use the hand rubbing thing. Thats what makes a horse race I quess.

Have fun, tinkersd