Thread: "Hanging" Bench Strop

I saw one of these in a photo of the Dovo Factory a few years ago. Finally got a chance to put one together. The trick was figuring out how to stretch the leather.

Looks good my friend!

i think those are called frame strops.. similar to loom strops.

Nice design. Have to remember this one.

Looks really good!

If you find the old versions of these - common in europe at one time - you will see that almost without exception they are unusable due to the leather having stretched. And therein lies their great weakness. Unlike in a loom-strop where you can back-off the tension, with these you usually cannot, and eventually the leather sags to an unacceptable degree.

How long it takes to reach that point I don't know, so I hope you have very many years life left in your one.

Regards,
Neil

I was wondering myself about that problem. I was thinking I could insert some shims on top of the end supports if needed in the future. I also used screws instead of nails to make replacement easier. I stretched the leather using my body weight, so it it very tight as of now. (The picture shows how a rigged this)
I used horse shell which I was told does not stretch as much as cow hide, but I know nothing of leathers, and do not know if the horse leather will make a difference.

Nice work with alot of thought,I would almost bet that should you treat that strop with Shaving soap and a small amt of water once/ yr. (works great) stretch may not be a problem,Time will tell.

Baroque violin bows didn't have tension adjustment, but were tightened by shimming. The way that would work in this situation would be to fold up a piece of paper the width of the strop, the depth of the top of the block under the strop, and about four layers or so thick, and slide it in on top of the block at the end from inside, underneath, pushing the strap upward, making it tighter. You could keep doing that with bigger and bigger shims--even thin strips of wood for just about forever.

Thanks for the shaving soap suggestion. I treated it last night.
Increased the draw just slightly, (after hand rubbing, and letting it fully dry)which is what I was looking for.

Yea, like Pixelfixed said, wet it and let it dry. I Do it with form fitted holsters, the whole holster or just the hammer strap. Tightens up nicely.

Nice strop.