10 years of strop experience
David Weaver
As a follow-on to the commentary below about oil. First off, I"ll state that on something like a strop, I'll get enough to make two of the same thing so I can beat on the first thing and not be precious with it and then only be gentler if I have to. I used to be the opposite (with everything - cars, machines, power tools, etc. Even as a kid, my dad had us all going with the OWT that you never run anything full throttle. We ran the chainsaw below WFO, and the mowers at 1/2 to 2/3rd throttle both to "take it easy on them and to save fuel". All of them wore out, anyway).
I've treated my 110v thickness planer like I don't care if it works tomorrow, and it's been going for about 6 or 7 years now (intermittent use, admittedly).
So, to the strops - I admired the horse butt strips that joel sells, but am too cheap to buy them because I can't trust myself not to have to do it two or three times to replace something I abused, so at the time I decided to make a bunch of strops, I bought four square feet of veg tanned bovine and two horse butt strips. As I recall, the total for all of this was about $80. I made one butt strip leather paddle strop (still using), one bovine paddle strop (still using) and one hanging butt strip razor strop (still using, but mostly retired in favor of french shell strops - not horween, btdt and one razor with spinework demolishes the surface finish on horween).
The reason for two strops in the shop was one bovine with no compound, one horse butt for everything else. I also do metalwork in the shop, so sometimes they have to be scraped for more than one reason.
I figured that within a short period of time, they'd:
* come loose from the wood backer
* be scraped to nothing, or torn or lose texture from the rough scraping
* have some property change to the leather because I've never spared the rod on what goes on the loaded strop
* get so contaminated with metal that they couldn't be used
None of those have happened, and until I fell in love with the buffer earlier this year (February? April?) I used both of them constantly.
What's gone on them:
* mineral oil
* neatsfoot oil
* strop conditioner (a waste of money for the razor strop, so wasted some on the shop strops)
* autosol
* WD 40
* various wax sticks
* loose abrasive (which is in autosol, anyway)
* dursol (like autosol, but seems to be much stinkier)
* spit
aside from a few nicks, both are in nearly perfect shape and I scrape them regularly if there's any accumulation on them often, and if there is any little glinty bit left seen on the clean surface (or even settled wood dust), then I use the corner of the card scraper to pick out anything that shines that doesn't just scrape off with a fingernail. if the card scraper scuffs a dot into the leather, it "grows back together", anyway, in short order.
I look at edges under microscopes from time to time - if there are any contaminants (even little metal bits that are barely big enough even to see in bright light), they make very visible nicks (under the scope) in edges, so the standard that I'm discussing here is pretty high.
don't spare the rod!
From that original $80 haul of leather, I must have enough to make ten more strops.
(as far as glue goes, one was glued with yellow glue and the other liquid hide - I couldn't tell which is which without steaming them at this point - no part of any of them has lifted off of the wood, but I did make a paddle strop for someone out of an old strop once and the first one had to be thrown away due to dry leather and too much glue - the glue soaked into the leather and made inconsistent hard spots)