Thread: First impressions

After hearing all the talk about horse strops, I finally got one. It's a Walking Horse- Horsebutt Exposed leather strop 3 x 17". Now I knew it wasn't going to be pretty before I got it but man it looks sort of ugly. I thought it was at least going to be the same color.



Now the good points. If you run your palm down the leather is feels really smooth. No bumps, wrinkles, waves etc. No draw, my razors just glided up and down the strop. The leather feels dry and stiff right now but I'm sure that will change after a couple of months of palm rubbing.

I heard that Horse leather had a different grain pattern than cow. So I used my jewelers loupe and compared my SRD premium I vs my new Horse strop. The Cow leather looked really smooth but the Horse leather was covered with micro pin holes (pores?). Is that where the hair grows? or is that where sweat comes out of? Do Horses sweat?

Anyway, I stropped a couple razors and afterwards they where cutting hair at med length. That was cool but my other strops can do that too. I'm going to see if what they say about prolonging an edge's life is true. I'm going to use this strop everyday to see what happens, it's going to be my "work horse" I'll let you know what happens and here are some more pics.

Follow up? I am looking into this strop myself!

How do I feel about the strop? Well...I had one and now I have 2 . They're just simple strops that work well. They aren't going to win any beauty contests but they work.



The first one has a cotton 2nd strop, I found out that cotton isn't my thing. Then I saw the other one and it had a Linen 2nd strop. So I bought it for that reason. Is the Linen as good as Tony Miller's Linen? No, but it works good enough for me.



Both strops are broken in (I think) and the razors just skate along the surface. I like the way the strops "tell" me if I'm making good contact with the edge. I use the one with Linen 100% with hollow grind razors. With heavier grinds I use 50% English Bridle and 50% horsehide. I now use Linen on all my razors. Does Linen keep an edge better? Maybe

I'm doing a little experiment. I'm trying to see how long I can keep 3 hollow grind razors going with just Linen and Horsehide. Each of the razors have 10 shaves so far and they're working great, no need for a touch up. The problem I have is that my shaving technique is a lot better then when I first started (edges would last about 7 shaves), so naturally my edges will last longer. Oh well, I'll see what happens.