Thread: Ranking of strop materials

Originally Posted by DaveW

Is that one shell? why is it so cheap (it's $140 at current exchange rates, cheap is a relative term, I guess).

aframestokyo has cordovan and linen 60000s for $202, which I think is my favorite option, but they say they're out of stock. I emailed them, that's quite a bit cheaper than the JNS price of the same and shipping isn't too bad from hawaii. It does seem a little more sensible to buy a strop than to buy a $250+ shell and make several and really only need one, and still have to buy the linen. I see the kanayama 3 is only about $100 there, too, but it is described as being softer, which doesn't sound like my bag.

Imperial also makes a horween cordovan strop.

Here I thought I was just stirring the pot by actually answering the question at the beginning, and it turns out that I'm probably the one who benefitted the most from this thread. Well, that's debatable, I have enough horse butt left to make 3 more strops and I think it cost me $30 shipped, so benefitting is used without regard to reckless spending.

The 2196 is shell, it is what I use to strop on.
It is the cheapest because it is just the shell backed with thin leather, and fabric strop. The higher models have thicker backing and fabric, or another leather strop for pre-stropping before the shell as well as fabric strop.