Where do I buy leather for strop?

H

HeavyTakeMusic

Joined
May 9, 2012
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Where is the cheapest place online to buy leather to make a strop. I'll be sharpening mostly convex knives, so is there a specific type of leathe I need? Or a certain softness?
 
springfield leather company, MO
you can make 10+ strops from 1 horsebutt, short & wide.
 
HeavyTakeMusic said:
Where is the cheapest place online to buy leather to make a strop. I'll be sharpening mostly convex knives, so is there a specific type of leathe I need? Or a certain softness?
Click to expand...

If you're going to be doing mostly convex knives, a free hanging strop will work best, rather than a benchblock strop. And as Singularity said, an old belt with work just fine with a bit of compound rubbed on.


Stitchawl
 
dataz722 said:
I am far far far from an expert, but this is what I am going to buy to make my strops. It is cheap and enough to make any number of strops you could ever want and to make as many as your friends could ever want too.

http://www.amazon.com/Leather-Piece...1?s=arts-crafts&ie=UTF8&qid=1337784768&sr=1-1
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Data, that's a perfect piece of leather to use as a starting point for strops. But before you cut it down, why not make it even better?

Wet the leather under the tap. Don't hold it there... just move it around until every part is wet, front and back, then set it aside for about two hours. Put in on the kitchen counter and then roll the heck out of it with a heavy rolling pin. Keep rolling for 10-15 minutes! Now stop and let the leather dry overnight. The next day, use some good quality shoe cream (NOT shoe polish!) that you can buy in any shoe store or shoe counter, and rub just a bit of it into the leather to recondition it. Don't overdo this... a few pea-sized bits of cream is all you need.

This will do two things; it will compress the leather making it a firmer substrate for compound use. (Easier to get sharp bevels on a firm base. If you plan to strop convex edges you might want to cut off that strop before you do all this.) The second thing it will do is cause the natural silicates in the leather to migrate towards the top of the leather to use as the finishing strop. These silicates are the finest degree of finishing grit you may find to use AFTER stropping on compound-covered leather. Then, cut up your strops. Make some bench mounted and some free hanging. You have more than enough leather for both. Then you might want to start advertising selling strops for ridiculously high prices as so many others have here...

Stitchawl
 
stitchawl said:
If you're going to be doing mostly convex knives, a free hanging strop will work best, rather than a benchblock strop. And as Singularity said, an old belt with work just fine with a bit of compound rubbed on.


Stitchawl
Click to expand...

Old belt + used as a hanging strop = :thumbup:

This works remarkably well. The 'cherry on top' is picking just the right compound to put on it, appropriately selected for the steel. Using the leather belt in a hanging-strop fashion goes a long way toward minimizing the compression issues seen in hard-backed leather, which will tend to make the leather roll/conform around the apex, if not very careful with pressure exerted. If pressure is a little too heavy on hard-backed & somewhat softish leather, rounding of the apex usually results. Extra pressure exerted on a free-hanging strop will make the strop deflect away, instead of compressing the leather and rolling it around the apex. This makes it sort of 'self-regulating' with pressure, and that keeps contact light at the edge, as it should be.

Having said that, one can even get great results using just paper & compound on a hard backing, like wood or glass, or over a sharpening stone. The thinness of a single sheet of paper, plus the hard backing, minimizes the conformable substrate problem as described above, and therefore helps produce very crisp edges.

I have a LOT of leather, bought at Tandy and Hobby Lobby over a few years' time, which is largely unused these days. The two methods described above are what comprise about 99% of my stropping as of late, as I've found they are working better than anything else I've tried. Lots of ways to get it done, having spent very little $$ at all. If you have to spend $$, invest it in the compound used (even that won't be too expensive for most needs). Keeping things simple, but intelligently so, makes for better results most of the time.


David
 
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