Thread: Anyone ever heard of a Bench Strop?

Hello All,
A buddy mine makes pocket and carving knives and recently mentioned that he has a giant, 12X36X10, bench strop. Leather on one side and some other material on the other. He picked it up at an estate sale and says it has a manufacture date of 1920 or something similar. He has worn it out and is wandering where to find another. Has anyone on the forum seen or heard of something like this?

Sure, I have a few bench strops, but not that size (assuming your dimensions are inches and not cm).

There are places that sell them, and guys that make them in their shops. Two of my favorite are simply a nice piece of leather glued to a scrap of stone counter top remnant.

Here is a photo of some of mine. Does your look similar at all?

Bigger is just bigger, honestly I am not sure why anyone would want that thickness or width. The length would be nice to a point...I'm not sure I could keep a consistent stroke past about 20-24 inches. And I do not desire any width greater than 3 inches even for these (which I hone OFTEN)

Lipshaw Microtome strops I guess you could call a bench strop. Here is a photo of mine, wall mounted. They are amazing strops for razors. The one side is a rubberized diamond used pre leather. The other is the leather and in my case Neil Miller leather. Sweeeeeet!!!
IMHO the best stropping system ever devised. All in one system. You cant beat it.

Darl (Tarkus)

The dimensions might be off, I'll have to ask for more info on it. He makes larger knives and restores/collects so that might be the reason for the size. I like that setup Tarkus, I might have to look into those.

The largest blade I've polished/honed was a 15 inch length blade with a 3 inch profile (in razor speak, we might say 24/8)

Finished it on a strop 2 inches wide and cannot imagine any added utility from a wider strop (the edge is usually curved and rarely contacts more than a 2-3 inch width of a strop anyway).

Where did you get the Lipshaw at? I tried google but couldn't find anyone making them.

Originally Posted by dhat

Where did you get the Lipshaw at? I tried google but couldn't find anyone making them.

Yeah the are getting harder & harder to find. They stopped making them years & years ago. Remember these strops were to finish strop the blades that took tissue samples for the medical field. Now everything is done with computer driven precision equipment, so they had no more need to produce these old school manual pieces.
Every once and a while you see one for sale on the bay. I got mine from a buddy, who sort of cornered the market so to speak. Buying as many as he could find. He is the one who refurbished mine. I took one look at that killer flame paint job and knew that unit had my name on it. The best thing is that its not all show and no go, they really do a magnificent job.
I made the wall mount because they do tend to take up a bit of real estate, with the mount I can swing it out of the way, not to mention to showcase that killer paint job.

Keep looking dhat I promise you will not be disapointed if you get one.
Darl (Tarkus)

Bench strop in any size is pretty easy to make.

Originally Posted by dhat

Hello All,
A buddy mine makes pocket and carving knives and recently mentioned that he has a giant, 12X36X10, bench strop. Leather on one side and some other material on the other. He picked it up at an estate sale and says it has a manufacture date of 1920 or something similar. He has worn it out and is wandering where to find another. Has anyone on the forum seen or heard of something like this?

I have like 4 of them, 3 home made and one purchased.
Bench strops are the norm for knife users, and very common for razor users.
Here how I made my last one in case you are interested in the how-to:

http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...-tutorial.html