Thread: Lather Logic for Strops

A Historical Perspective

Old barber manuals advocated lather for conditioning strops. Many of the best shaving soaps used tallow(rendered beef fat) for their soap base. Most shaving soaps leave at least 5% of the tallow unreacted.

So maybe their thinking back then was to replenish what was only natural to the leather?? Soap making in the old days was common knowledge, and also the ingredients.

Please don't experiment and slop tallow on your nice strop, the pure stuff will get rancid and I doubt that would be good, but if you already use lather to condition your strop it might make historical sense to use a tallow based shave soap.