Strop Restore

[edmartin1954]

I've been working on this horse hide strop for the last few days. I've cleaned it with Murphy's and oiled a few times with neatsfoot oil. I've sanded it with 400 and 600 grit and was wondering if I needed to sand out all of the stains. I like the "well-worn" look but I don't want to mess up my edges.

1st pic - before I started

2nd pic - current

Any advice? Thanks!!

[sharptonn]

Well, You have sanded through the outer shell, which was not very good/usable to begin with.
Basically a strip of leather. I think continue until it's all gone and coat it with CroOx to use in freshening-up good edges.
A commendable effort, but sadly, most old strops are not worth the effort.
JMHO

[PaulFLUS]

Bouschie has done some strop restoration and could probably shed more light than I can. Hopefully he will chime in. I would try to cover the stamp as much as possible and as tom said sand the rest of the way through the dry, chaffy part. At the end I would sand it to at least 1k and soak it well with Neatsfoot or another good conditioner. Do it in many light coats until it seems saturated instead of bathing it or soaking it.

Again, I am not the foremost expert but that is how I would proceed.

[Firebox]

IMHO. Once you sanded it to an acceptable surface, I would use nothing but neatsfoot oil on it. Coat it, use it, work it with your fingers and oil it again until you start to develop a smooth finish. Not difficult don't overthink it. I defintiely would use any abrasives on it.

[bouschie]

If you want to make the stamps show up more you can go over them with Rub-N-Buff. When dry you will have to sand with 2000 sand paper. You said you sanded with 400 & 600 sandpaper. That is kind of aggressive. I would now go 1000, 1500 and finish with 2000. Wrap sandpaper around a flat piece of wood and lay strop on a flat surface. Don't worry about removing stains. Its more important to get strop flat and smooth. I do not oil the front of the strop. I only apply a few light coats of neetsfoot oil to the back of the strop to replace some of the moisture in the leather.

[Gasman]

I'm with Tom on this one. It looks to me you have sanded through the outer shell. This is the part of the horse hide that makes the strop smooth and slick.
At this point you can still use it for a strop but its never going to be what it was. Use it after you have sanded it flat and very fine. Its still leather. And adding oil sparingly like once a week or two weeks is better than soaking it.

[edmartin1954]

Thanks everyone!

[Firebox]

In my earlier post I forgot ' not' . definitely I would not use abrasives on my daily strop

[mattnat]

There is hope for the strop! I like to use brush to get the grit out and you could vacuum as well. There is an old Japanese Barber manual I can't remember the name but he recommends using a wet rag to pick up any grit and then rubbing with dry rag for 15 minutes to reform the leather into a slick polished surface. It works well! I sanded to 1000 and added a bit of leather conditioner to the dry spots. The patchy look will faid as oil spreads.
The manual is herehttps://naturalwhetstones.com/razor-honing-on-natural-stone-methods. It describes how to care for a horse shell stop. The thin shell layer is a couple mm thick, try to sand conservatively.

I did the same on a peace of veg tanned leather and it did not reform as slick so I added too much bees wax by rubbing it on directly... the solution was to use an iron on the dry strop on low over paper to pick up the wax. The result was slick and reformed.
Enjoy!

[edmartin1954]

I think I've already sanded through the "shell".