Item Description
I recently purchased the Kanayama 30000. The strop arrived in a nice box, well packaged.
First appearances looked very promising. It is obviously very finely crafted.
The leather is absolutely flawless, smooth and silky to the hand. A razor passed on it has wonderful smooth sensation.
Draw I found to be about medium. Not as heavy as a TM latigo, nor quite as slick as my vintage Shell.
The leather in my 30000 is a little on the thin side. It deforms and stretches slightly under use, so it is necessary to hold both components at the same time.
The linen is the disappointing part of it. It is a very heavy , vintage style linen with a most disconcerting wash-board sensation. Not a pleasure to use.
Several tests with the linen show that it isn't as effective as the TM linen, routinely dropping HHT values to a point that the leather alone is not able to recover. I took a chance and sanded the surface of the linen lightly, and this improved the feel under the razor, but it didn't improve the effectiveness, nor did it degrade the function. It did mute the washboard sensation, and makes it feel a little smoother.
All in all, this strop provides fair value. The magic (and the money) are in the leather. The two part strop set, on it's own, may not be adequate to achieve the maximum keenness, and so one may wish to consider purchasing the three part strop set to be assured of achieving the best results.
First appearances looked very promising. It is obviously very finely crafted.
The leather is absolutely flawless, smooth and silky to the hand. A razor passed on it has wonderful smooth sensation.
Draw I found to be about medium. Not as heavy as a TM latigo, nor quite as slick as my vintage Shell.
The leather in my 30000 is a little on the thin side. It deforms and stretches slightly under use, so it is necessary to hold both components at the same time.
The linen is the disappointing part of it. It is a very heavy , vintage style linen with a most disconcerting wash-board sensation. Not a pleasure to use.
Several tests with the linen show that it isn't as effective as the TM linen, routinely dropping HHT values to a point that the leather alone is not able to recover. I took a chance and sanded the surface of the linen lightly, and this improved the feel under the razor, but it didn't improve the effectiveness, nor did it degrade the function. It did mute the washboard sensation, and makes it feel a little smoother.
All in all, this strop provides fair value. The magic (and the money) are in the leather. The two part strop set, on it's own, may not be adequate to achieve the maximum keenness, and so one may wish to consider purchasing the three part strop set to be assured of achieving the best results.
