Strop Maintenance

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kennyj

Joined
Feb 24, 2006
Messages
139
I've got a few HandAmerican strops, and I'm curious about the best way to maintain them. The only stuff I remember being able to find on their site about cleaning is simply to use a "waterless hand cleaner." I tried rubbing in and wiping off some Goop on one, but it didn't seem to do much other than change the Goop's color to look a bit like that of the leather, and make it smell a bit wierd. Is there anything better I should be using to clean the leather, either in terms of cleaning product, or technique?

On a related note, should I be trying to condition the leather with anything? I've got mink oil and shoe cleaning/moisturizing lotion laying around, I know the shoe lotion doesn't contain any silicone but I'd have to check on the mink oil (it's Kiwi, if that helps.)

Not only do I have some strops that are just clogged up with grit or metal, but I've got a few scratches and even light cuts on a couple - some from newbie mistakes from myself and friends I've tried to teach, and some from trying to strop edges that were a little more mangled than I thought from first glance. Is there a way to restore the surface, or am I stuck with whatever damage has been done?
 
Cleaning strops can be done with some soft (red) scotchbrite and just rubbing the strop. I'm not sure of the other things.
 
Simple cleaning of your strop can be done with WD-40. To re-surface your strop use a palm sander starting with 150 grit paper then 600 or 800 to finish, wipe it down with some wd-40, apply compound and start stropping. I would not suggest using scotch bright to clean your strop.
 
Sorry, i misread my source. I guess he recommends using the softest scotchbrite to take old compound off your strop.
 
Do you just spray the WD-40 on a towel or something and use that to scrub the surface, or do you spray it into the strop and blot it out?

A few of these little pieces of leather are expensive to replace, so I want to make sure I don't screw it up. I've heard anecdotal tales of WD-40 being bad for leather in some cases, though not nearly as many times as I've heard it recommended for cleaning, conditioning, and waterproofing.

On that note, will it interfere at all with diamond spray, on account of its water-repellant properties? I was under the impression that the reason it works so well is because the water carries the diamond particles into the leather a bit, embedding them to a point.
 
Spray it on a towel first.

Once the diamond spray is on its not easy to get off and even after I clean one of my strops it still looks a little dirty but its not. WD-40 may not get everything off but it takes enough off between resurfacing.
 
That actually explains quite a bit. One last question... I'm using one of their "scrubbed bull" strops and it's pretty hard... to the point where light strokes feel like I may as well be working with a stone. I might have gone a bit overboard with the spray (likely) but in any case I don't seem to get very good results unless I back off on the angle a bit and apply some downward pressure. Now, the results I do get in the end are astonishingly good, but I can't help but feel that it'd be better and safer if the strop were a bit softer so as to reduce the risk of rolling the edge. Is there anything I can do to make the leather a bit softer and more flexible? I do have an old plain leather strop that got torn up a bit when I was first learning that I can use to test things on, thankfully, but I only have that one that I'm willing to sacrifice.
 
I've always had great luck with goop. Just apply a glop of it on the strop, rub it around a bit so it can soften up any surface compound, then clean vigorously with a paper towel or rag to remove old compound and metal particles.
 
A softer strop will increase the probability of rolling the edge. I also do most of my stropping using some pressure, but much of my stropping is for polishing the bevel, which I suspect helps ease many cutting tasks. If you keep your angle low enough to not round the edge with the higher pressure strops, and finish with one or two light strops at a higher angle (a micro-microbevel), I can get good results with many steels. The leather on my strops is all pretty soft, so I don't know what to tell you about hard leather (does it feel the same if you use a different stropping compound?).

I've cut all of my strops over time enough that I wanted to do something in attempt to fix them. Ended up taking a B&D mouse to the leather (finishing with 220 grit), removing the cuts (a good side affect is to make the leather thinner), and reapplying abrasive. Has worked for me, and after some use the leather feels the same as it did prior.
 
I am trying to like the bull leather but its not working, I get much better results from the Bovine leather. The hard surface of the bull leather causes less give reducing the chance of rolling though it seems to roll the edge easily, the Bovine leather is softer and has just the right amount of give but increases the chance to roll the edge. I think the swede like surface is causing most of the problem but I'm not real sure, I thought it was working well but when I use the bovine leather the edge is sharper and I get more polish faster. I also like the feedback from the bovine more, nice smooth feeling, the feedback from the bull leather seems ruff.
 
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