Thread: Ranking of strop materials

By the way, this strop was 24 inches long to start, it is a #2, and one could get two 22" strips of leather out of it. I cut right out of the heart of it and it's 24 inches measured at the longest points.

Obviously haven't stropped with either of them (this or the kanayama), but just looking so far, if I were going for cost, I would think about this or the low dollar kanayama strops (it's really hard to beat a cordovan strop like what Kanayama makes for $100, I don't know how he makes it for that). But I think based just on leather feel, the kanayama 80k is much more substantial (and more costly) and the surface is different, and feels a little more engineered to razors. That's not to say that this leather doesn't feel spectacular, it is the nicest raw material I've ever gotten by a mile or several of them, it really has superbly smooth surface feel that is uniformly tight and smooth. No visible pores, no nothing.

I think with what I have left, I could easily fence the leather on ebay for $100 to people who would make small leather goods, so that would leave me with a leather cost of about $80. That's not bad for having your own cordovan strop.

I don't know what the brass cost, it's just a simple 6" x 2" 1/8th thick piece of 360 alloy brass. I would've used something a little cheaper if I hadn't had it as excess. Something from home depot would've been fine.

With what you have left over you could make two 19" strops that would be well regarded.?

Originally Posted by randydance062449

With what you have left over you could make two 19" strops that would be well regarded.?

There's enough in the one side to get about 20-21 inches of strop out of it, but I don't think there's enough to get 19 out of the other. Just short of that, I'd think.

Some use of other leathers sewn to it would yield a 15 inch or so "user" area, though, I think I saw a strop with useable center about that large.

I think that sounds like a good plan.

So..I've finally gotten a chance to compare the two strops in brand new condition. i don't think this is a fair comparison, but it's fair for someone who doesn't want to wait for a strop to break in and become glossy.

This is the piece of horween. It's thin and very slick. (sorry, that's a zip tie until I get something brass to latch onto the door frame)



And the kanayama, the scuffing is superficial from the spine of a dovo bismarck. It is a real bitch what it does to strops, though, there's no reason for them to have the corny spine work they have on the razor and have it have sharp edges like it does. It's too bad on an otherwise wonderful shaver.



So, what do I think? The horween is slick and hard, the kanayama is thicker softer and more supple. The horween imparts a keener edge on a fresh razor. I know there's talk on here about how all strops do the same thing, that's all fine and good. My experience has been that the harder strops impart a keener edge if you have done your job keeping the strop clean and well honed. Holtzapffel says the same thing.

I'll repost again once the surface of the kayanama has become very slick. I'm debating on whether or not I want to keep it, because despite this somewhat expensive test, I think I'm more of a cheap strop guy. Neither will do anything that my $10 piece of horse butt strip won't, though I did have to work the horse butt strip and I had to do absolutely *nothing* to the leather on either of these. I can't settle with the fact that these are $200 if made by someone else (it cost me a little over a hundred to make this one after I sold off the scrap. And the kanayama was $270. I kind of wish at this point that i hadn't bought either of them, but it's always easy to say that after you've satisfied your curiosity.

But I do want to find another one of those silk finish linens in a big way. Hess hair milk or whatever. It's too bad they aren't more widely available, because they are the sheet.

Here's the strop I've been using, it's just a hacked up piece of horse butt with hardware stolen off of one of those $12 ebay strops (I didn't know any better several years ago with the ebay strop, at least I could use the hardware for something).

Just wanted to make it clear that I don't think any of this high dollar spending is necessary. I think there's about $7 or $8 worth of horse butt in that strop, and the edges are ugly because it was 3 inches wide at some point and out of laziness, I decided to cut the outside edges off without doing a good job of it.

It maintains a razor better than any of the purchased cowhide strops I had, but it was pretty harsh and coarse until it wore in (took about a month of daily use)



And here is the silk finish type linen i'm talking about. This one is on the back of an illinois #226 horsehide strop (it was NOS, i'm not aware of them making horse leather strops now). I would love to have any NOS branded version of this, the waxy whitish linen that has "silk finish" anywhere in the name.