Strop

A flat block of wood and some flex cut gold polish compound works great but nothing seems to work as good to me as the rough side of a piece of leather.

All it takes is a scrap piece of leather mounted smooth side down and a board to tack it or glue it down on. Make it your own way as wide or as thin and as long or short as you want. All you need then is the polishing medium. White rouge, green rouge, or the Flex Cut gold compound work great. Some guys even use red rouge but it takes longer in my experience because it doesn't cut as well as the other three I mentioned. It will work though.

Now if you are talking about a true barbers strop I've ordered a good one from Success Barber& Beauty Supply. www.geocities.com/successbarbersupply
 
I made one out of a chunk of 2x4 and some leather scraps, plus I have one by HandAmerican. They both work great, but the HandAmerican is 10 times nicer and doesn't cost very much at all. They throw in some free compounds too.
 
TorzJohnson said:
I made one out of a chunk of 2x4 and some leather scraps, plus I have one by HandAmerican. They both work great, but the HandAmerican is 10 times nicer and doesn't cost very much at all. They throw in some free compounds too.
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I second this; www.handamerican.com
 
I got a few lengths of leather from Hand American and made my own hanging strops. I awled two holes in each end, attached some gromets and ran paracord through. Hangs on my wall by a little hook.
 
Lee Valley Tools has great strops and CRO compound too. Plus you pay in the Canadian peso and they mail order.
 
Hi,

There are some forumers who say "use the rough side", but all the strops that I see for sale seems to be using the smooth side for stropping. So, which side should we use?

Thanks.
 
I've always been told rough side is the one you use for stropping. Truthfully though, very little of the 'cutting' or polisihing is done by the leather. It is done by the polishing medium used on it so it probably matters very little which side is exposed. For finishing off an edge many people use a bare leather, or their pant leg blue jeans or even a piece of cardboard or bare wood.
 
BillL said:
Hi,

There are some forumers who say "use the rough side", but all the strops that I see for sale seems to be using the smooth side for stropping. So, which side should we use?

Thanks.
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www.handamerican.com has a really nice set up that is a slab of Corian with a smooth tanned leather on one side and a little rougher untanned leather on the flip side. Its very reasonable in price and because its on a Corian Pedestal, it actually sits on my desk and looks like some exotic piece of desk furniture. They include CrO Paste (the green stropping stuff) and you are instructed to lightly work it into the untanned "rougher" side.

When you strop, you begin on the green CrO side and then flip the Corian and finish off on the smooth side.

Search the archives on stropping because if you do not do it correctly, you can negate all the work you did sharpening in the first place.
 
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