Thread: Lather Logic for Strops

It works very well. I think it came from the "use what is available" theory. It probably wasn't some scientific fat/tallow thing.

Scott (honedright) said it worked great for him in more than one old thread. He gave the best tutorial on it that I've read , in the thread I linked to earlier. I was interested but reluctant to get one of my strops that wet. When he told me that I had to rub it down with a bottle for 45 minutes I lost interest. My strops seem to be working so I'm not going to fix them.

Holy thread revival!

I have been using a Star Shaving 3" bridal strop for over a year and palm rub it every day whether I shave or not. I do this because since I got the thing it has had some weird draw issues. It had fast spots and it really effects the speed I can strop.

In the beginning it was ok because I stropped slow but now that I am honing more razors 100+ Slow laps on 3 or 4 razors at a time just takes too long.

Anyway, after this morning's shave using DR Harris Windsor soap, I decided to give this a shot. I left the lather on the strop for 11hours and just gave it a good palm rubbing and followed with a 100 laps on this mornings razor, a 6/8 French point Boker Arbolito. The draw has improved greatly! It is even and now has a nice medium draw.

100 fast laps now warms the blade a bit and tuned the edge nicely. I am excited to see how this effects some of the razors in my normal rotation.

Glad I tried it! Thank you!

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This particular soap contains natural tallow which is good for leather and I use it on one particular horsehide strop. Haven't noticed any thing on the strop surface that would upset me. Seems to work fine.

Originally Posted by mrsell63

This particular soap contains natural tallow which is good for leather and I use it on one particular horsehide strop. Haven't noticed any thing on the strop surface that would upset me. Seems to work fine.

Sort of...
Soap is made by the chemical reaction of fat (and oil) with alkali.
The generic reaction is saponification and the end product is soap.
When done correctly there is no alkali (lye) and no fat (tallow) left.

See: Saponification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Since alkali is so hard on skin 'people' soap including shave soap
is hyper-fatted. Laundry soap and other "cleaning" soaps are slightly
rich in alkali and the alkali can react with grease and oil.

One interesting name game is Mitchells Wool Fat Shave soap.
By most measures lanolin is not a fat and is not saponified in MWF
but added as a conditioner to a well balanced tallow based soap.

Subtle but important.