The linen strop on my Illinois 127 seems a little stiff. Is this normal, or should I be rinsing it?
Is my linen too stiff?
- Thread starter Rick Sparks
- Start date
Stiff is good.
If it's a recent vintage 127 then rinsing won't do a thing - it's plastic coated, which is also why it's so stiff.
- Thread starter
- #4
I'm betting this linen is plastic coated. If so, would it not be a good idea to use a paste on it?
Pastes won't stick unless you do something about the coating. A pumice stone will remove some of the plastic, but it'll never be a great pasting strop.
Interesting. Know why they do that by chance?
No idea. Presumably it replaces the beeswax/chalk coating that they used to use, but it's inferior IMO. I took one and sanded the plastic down to expose the underlying fibers, and it worked better after that without compromising the stiffness. It still wouldn't take a paste terribly well though it worked well with the Harbor Freight white rouge (the stiffness of the fibers helped it take the abrasive from the hard stick) it still needed to be reapplied every few days. But since that stick is something like $4 and would still last many years that was what I went with. I've since made it into a paddle and gave it to a newbie, last I heard he was using it with his own stick of white rouge.
The vintage 127 I have, the linen is also quite stiff. Perhaps they were looking for a way to maintain that sort of feel?
- Thread starter
- #9
I'm going to try sanding mine too. I just really hate the feel of it as it is. I know that's not a very scientific basis for the decision, but so far a lot of what I'm learning about honing and stropping and str8 shaving is intuitive. So, unless somebody has a reason why I shouldn't, I'm going to sandpaper this linen strop until it feel more like cloth and less like plastic.
Make sure you clean it extremely well afterwards. Use a foaming carpet cleaner or something like that to make sure the grit is lifted out of the fibers.
Rick Sparks,
A bit off topic but may I ask what it is you are playing with a bow in your avatar? Looks like a sledge hammer handle!
I have been fooling around with cigar box guitars lately trying to get that early, home made blues sound.
Tony
A bit off topic but may I ask what it is you are playing with a bow in your avatar? Looks like a sledge hammer handle!
I have been fooling around with cigar box guitars lately trying to get that early, home made blues sound.
Tony
I am not sure that is such a good idea. You will undoubtedly damage the yarn which will result in broken yarns and unraveling of the linen fabric.
You have to sand it really deeply for that to become a problem. The cloth is really thoroughly saturated in plastic. When I made mine into a paddle strop I cut it in two with a box cutter and the strop didn't unravel in the slightest. In cross section it basically looked like a strip of fiberglass.
So what's the point of sanding, sounds like you are not gonna get rid of the plastic anyway.
You don't get rid of it, but you do expose enough fibers that it will hold a paste a little bit better.
