Thread: My fave way to make "linen" from old jeans

Forgive my lousy photography, I hope it's good enough to get the point across. To make a "linen" strop out of denim, you need an outer piece wrapped around a core piece, to simulate the weaves of yesteryear which were continuous & had no edges.

My first attempt at this used a strip of soft plastic for the core, and silicone RTV adhesive. The adhesive was too liquid & bled through the cloth, and the plastic was too hard, resulting in a strop that felt hard and scratchy.

I decided the results would be better if I used a fabric core instead of plastic, and contact cement. I used DAP Weldwood Contact Cement from the hardware store. It comes in a bottle with a built-in brush attached to the inside of the lid.

Cut two strips of denim, one an inch wider than the other. The width of the narrower piece will be the width of your finished strop Use some bits of packing tape or duct tape to hold them flat to the table, slightly (but not overly) stretched out. Coat both pieces with contact cement.

When the glue is dry (about 15 min), stick the narrower piece to the middle of the wider piece. Put some cement on the edges of the wider piece and on the edges of the narrower piece. Wait for the cement to dry, then fold the edges over, starting from the middle.

Now you have a strip of denim without an apparent edge. Sew on some D-rings and you're done.

A couple of tips:

You can use any twill fabric (twill is identifiable by the diagonal pattern on the back--look it up on Wikipedia). Denim is twill, Chino is not.

Also, don't fiddle-fart around with the placement. Contact cement bonds the instant it touches itself & it can't be moved. pull the center piece slightly taught, then ram it authoritatively onto the larger piece in one confident motion.

I suppose this will seem a bit silly of me to say, but....

If you have a fabric covering wrapped around a fabric core, then why not simply stitch it all together with a sewing machine and avoid the glue routine completely?

Because if you do that you will have stitches poking through the top piece. You don't want that. You want a flat, continuous piece with no disturbances at the edges.

Thanks for another useful contribution to Categoryo_It_Yourself - Straight Razor Place Wiki: Making a linen strop out of denim - Straight Razor Place Wiki

My pleasure, sir.

Thanks Johnny, I had just found a pair of jeans that were screaming "i'm really a strop!!!" so now you took the guess work out.. now to get some contact cement..

I have thought about this too. I was thinking you could sew it the way that a men's tie is sewn, so you would wind up with one hidden seam running down the middle of the back of the strop. Essentailly you sew the seam creating a tube or sleeve then you turn it inside out so the extra bits are on the inside. Then you would press it flat.