I do realize that this is a bit like asking “what’s the best razor?”, but what strop should I start with for my imminent Moarteen Koraat?
All I know about strops is they come in leather, cotton, probably some other materials… and I seem to remember hearing denim works fine.
I’m in the USA, but buying from overseas isn’t out of the question.
Thanks!
The best deal going, I think, is Duke City Strops on eBay. I’ve had a couple of them, but keep giving them away to people starting out.
That’s two votes for Duke City. Sounds like a winner.
Let me know if you have questions about stropping when it arrives.
Thanks. I’m a visual learner so I’ll turn to YouTube when the time comes.
I would look for 2 things
- width: you want to get a strop that is large enough to fit the whole edge (8 cm/3 inches should do it)
- you probably want a leather plus linen strop, and not only leather
I have a Duke City strop, and it’s perfectly serviceable
That’s two votes for Duke City. Sounds like a winner.
I prefer a 2.5" strop. You should be doing a lightly rolling X stroke anyway to ensure good contact and many straight razors aren’t quite straight so it’s useful to be able to hang the tip off a bit if it’s subtly bent. Plus on my 3" strop it sorta bothers me that there’s this whole area on the toe side not getting any wear. Maybe if it was a reversible design so I could rotate it as I go…
Lemmy group buy strop when?
Whenever you want -but do we have a logo for our group/server yet?
asking the real questions!
No, we do not. A lemming with a razor is a tricky prompt. Do you have a good idea?
I thought of the lemmy logo with some lather, but I didn’t find a quick free service where you can upload a picture to modify it. In the Bing Image Creator, the following was the best I could manage:
But that does’t look like the lemmy logo:
This was my first result with carefree prompting:
Bing’s insistence on combining shaving-related prompts with beards is puzzling 😅
What about a logo competition?
That, or we need to attract some creative types to the community🙂
Two other strop makers that seem well regarded and I keep almost buying from are Tony Miller https://heirloomrazorstrop.com/ and Torolf Myklebust https://www.scrupleworks.com/
I find the linen component useful for cleaning up a fresh edge and that actual linen seems to work better for this (and my experience mirrors others that it’s particularly noticeable with coticule edges). An acquaintance with a bit of leatherworking skill fashioned me one from some webbing I found on etsy from a link at B&B: https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/780497457/linen-tape-by-yard-7cm-wide-tape?ref=yr_purchases
On a more serious note, If you have not yet used a strop and straight for a significant amount of time, don’t get a nice strop. You will nick it. Your first strop should be cheap enough that you don’t mind if it gets ruined before you get good at stropping.
This is not to say that stropping is difficult in any way. It’s not. It’s just that you’re doing a very repetitive action daily. That’s boring and you’ll automatically try to do it fast, and every little slip-up makes a nick that goes click twice with every lap from now on. You can try to carefully trim flapping pieces of leather from the nick and sand in smooth, but in never really goes back to a fully smooth draw.
I was impatient and got myself a really nice strop after a month or two of using straights, and I regretted it.
So my recommendation is not to treat this like a starter razor where it makes sense to choose something good that lives long.
Ha, my first strop made it through unscathed. My first nick was on my second strop once I’d had it a while and gotten complacent. Complacency is what really kills strops so I look at it as meditation and try to be present with it, and indeed whenever I’m waving a fragile and very sharp edge around.
