Canvas strop treatment?

[jamesbeat]

What's the best treatment for a canvas strop?
I don't want to use this particular strop for abrasives of any kind, just plain canvas.
I read this article:
http://www.classicshaving.com/articles/article/590351/4052.htm
It says that the canvas should be treated by rubbing a dry bar of soap over the canvas and then rubbing with a glass bottle to smooth it.
It also says that one should treat a leather strop with lather, and use a pumice stone to remove the outer nap.

This article appears to be contemporary, is the information still relevant?

 

[mparker762]

There are a lot of different ways to treat a canvas strop. It all depends on what type of strop it is and what you want it to do.

The Dovo strops use some sort of thin jute or hemp webbing that benefits from soaping, which adds rigidity to the fibers. Heavier webbing doesn't benefit quite so much from the soap though. Or you can slather the fabric in the Dovo linen paste, which is supposedly a chalk-based concoction, and is what the Dovo strops seem to be treated with from the factory. This paste has very slight abrasive properties and helps keep the razor sharp for a long time. It's about $5 from Classic, and there's enough to treat the strop about 4 times (i.e. about a year or two worth of use). My personal favorite though is the white rouge sold at the hardware store. I got mine from Harbor Freight, but I've seen similar stuff at Home Depot and Lowes. This is also a mild polishing agent that is just enough of a polish to keep the razor sharp day after day, and costs about $4 for a 4oz bar (a lifetime supply). I don't really know what's in the white rouge, probably either chalk or Linde "A" grade polish (0.3 micron aluminum oxide aka sapphire).

Or you can get the Classic white lapping compound and smear some of that into the fabric. They sell it for their balsa bench hone but it works on a canvas strop as well. I suspect that it's a 0.3 micron Linde "A" compound, but I don't know for sure.

I treat my leather strops with shaving lather. I brush on a thick dry-ish lather with an old boar brush, let it sit for a minute or two, then wipe it off with an old washcloth.

 

[jamesbeat]

Wow! Thanks for such a comprehensive answer.

I think that covers everything I needed to know. I was reluctant to use abrasive paste on my hanging strop. I figured that being relatively new to straights I didn't want to apply an abrasive to my strop as I'm guessing it's pretty much irreversible given the absorbent nature of canvas.
I was going to keep the canvas plain and make some paddle strops for abrasives.

It seems from what you say though that a very mild polishing abrasive is a choice that I won't regret down the line, so I'm going to go for a chalk based paste.

Does anyone ever make or use canvas paddle strops? It seems like they would hold paste really well, or is leather always better for a paddle?

 

[jamesbeat]

Also, what about the advice to use a pumice stone to remove the outer nap of the leather? is that wise?

 

[mparker762]

I think that covers everything I needed to know. I was reluctant to use abrasive paste on my hanging strop. I figured that being relatively new to straights I didn't want to apply an abrasive to my strop as I'm guessing it's pretty much irreversible given the absorbent nature of canvas.
I was going to keep the canvas plain and make some paddle strops for abrasives.

There are abrasives and there are abrasives. I wouldn't put something like 1 micron or 0.5 micron diamond, or even chrome oxide on a daily hanging strop. It's just too agressive and you will wear away your razor in no time, and these abrasives don't have a great reputation in this use (diamond has been reported as causing overhoning issues if you use it too much, and chrome oxide has been reported to actually dull the edge if you use it too much). But mild abrasives like chalk and wood ash have been used for a long time. All of my vintage strops seem to have had something on them, including my NOS Craftsman strop that was still sealed in its packaging when I got it - it was pretty heavily caked with some flavor of white paste. I wouldn't hesitate to use something like Linde "A" (0.3 micron sapphire) or 0.5 micron cerium oxide on a daily strop, and of course Dovo sells their chalk-based paste specifically for this purpose. One of these days I'd like to try Linde "B" (0.05 micron sapphire), but I suspect that it's too fine to do anything useful.

If you apply an abrasive you're unlikely to get it all out, but if it's a mild enough abrasive then you can get enough out that the rest won't make a difference - what little is left will eventually work its way down into the fibers or get loaded up with swarf and cease abrading. And the type of polishes I'm recommending are very fine and very slow - if you start stropping a razor that is at the point of needing a refresh, then they'll need a hundred or so laps to get it back into shape. Generally speaking, if you only strop on leather then the razor will go dull in about 7-14 days, so if you use these polishes on your daily linen strop then 10-20 laps per day should be enough to keep it going.

You can get basically the same result using an unpasted canvas strop (possibly stiffened with soap or beeswax), but it takes more laps because cotton and linen by themselves aren't very abrasive. If I'm using a bare strop then I'll tend to do about 50 laps on the canvas and another 50 or so on the leather, but that's a lot of stropping and a lot of guys balk at that sort of stropping, so getting some abrasive assistance seems to be a reasonable compromise.

It seems from what you say though that a very mild polishing abrasive is a choice that I won't regret down the line, so I'm going to go for a chalk based paste.

It's your choice of course, and some guys take a hard line on the subject. Roughly half of my strops are treated with something or other, and the other half are left bare (or in the case of vintage strops, left with whatever they had on them). I'm a strop whore and have several doorknobs and clothes hangars full.

Does anyone ever make or use canvas paddle strops? It seems like they would hold paste really well, or is leather always better for a paddle?

Tony Miller made one for me several years ago with horsehide on one side and his cotton webbing on the other, but it was never a catalog item and AFAIK it's the only one in existence. I'm not sure if he's taking special requests any more, but it can't hurt to ask him. I'm quite fond of it, and it's been my daily strop for several months now. I've also made a few others by disassembling vintage strops with "issues" and gluing them to appropriately shaped-and-lapped boards.

Also, what about the advice to use a pumice stone to remove the outer nap of the leather? is that wise?

Shouldn't hurt, but none of mine ever had any nap to speak of. I've used pumice to remove nicks from strops and it doesn't hurt the strop then so I can't imagine it would hurt a new one.

 

[Tony Miller]

I've done a few cloth covered paddles but was never pleased with the appearance. There is not easy way to get a neat end on the cloth as over time it will fray even though it is glued down. This ragged edge will look untidy and I'm picky about how my products look when solkd and how they will weather the test of time.

I thought about a neat little leather cap on each end but the time in cutting and attaching them, 2 per paddle will quickly add up to at least half the cost of the paddle making them prohibitively expensive. Adding more labor/time is also an issue as I simply cannot make as fast as I can sell things now day. I do thank you all for making this possible, that I can be blessed with work when much of the US is in an economic downturn.

Tony

 

[mparker762]

I smeared a little wood glue on the ends of mine to prevent fraying. It's held up so far but it isn't a 10 on the looks scale. But the strop really works beautifully - nearly the advantages of a hanger and really none of the disadvantages, except that I do miss the length of a hangar.

I've made two of these linen paddles myself, one using a cannibalized Illinois strop so the plastic treatment keeps it from fraying, and the other was from a cannibalized shell/linen hose type strop. Both of these are longer, the Illinois guy is about 12" long and the shell/hose one is about 15" long.

For the shell/hose one I made a hanging harness (so it's a hanging paddle strop) with the leather end overlapping the linen and abutting the leather. The other end I glued down a small leather patch over it. I also beveled the edges of the linen side of the paddle so the thicker folded edge of the hose was recessed a bit. It would have been cleaner to just continue the leather off the edge of the end and wrap it back around to the linen side then run the bolts through it and hook the swivel harness in the loop that's left, and I may still do that since I think the shell is just a bit dead and I've got a strip of horsehide left over from my carbon black experiments.

I'll see if I can put up pictures this weekend...

 

[mparker762]

It would have been cleaner to make this with the strop leather looping around the top and over the linen, instead of using a separate piece of leather. And the bottom patches need to be redone - this was the thinnest leather I had, but it's too soft and didn't cut cleanly. Live and learn.

 

[jamesbeat]

Couldn't you make a double sided paddle with the canvas as one single piece looping from one handle, over the tip and back down to the handle?
That would allow for two grades of paste, and the ends could be hidden by the hardware for the handle.

Also, cyanoacrylate soaked into the ends would stop them fraying, but I think the ends would still have to be hidden because it wouldn't be easy to do a neat job of it.

 

[mparker762]

If you're gonna paste both sides then why not just use leather, so you don't have to deal with fraying linen at all? You really do want that leather side for your daily stropping.

The problem with CA is it will wick quickly through the fibers and dries very hard, and if the edge hits CA-impregnated linen it is likely to be damaged.

You could probably seal the edges with some sort of plastic sealant though. Illinois saturates their entire linen strap with some sort of plastic, and the paddle I made from Illinois linen has shown absolutely no interest in fraying even though I left the cut as-is. You could probably dip the last 1/4" of the linen strap in this stuff without causing any problems.