wrinkled horsehide

[Kavik79]

okay....I feel stupider than I want to admit, but here goes....for posterity and in hopes of getting answers

I have a Walking Horse Horsehide strop, lately hasn't felt as soft or flexible as it was. So the other night I applied some neatsfoot, rubbed it in and the surface felt better, but the whole thing still seemed stiff. So I tried flexing it back and forth gently for a while, just sort of playing with it in kind of S shapes waves while watching tv.....and at some point I wasn't paying enough attention and flexed too far and ended up with a bunch of little wrinkles in about 1/4 of the strop on one end


So, I tried searching, and found warnings about causing wrinkles by bending a strop too far, but nothing about fixing them. Can they just be sanded out like you would to fix a nick? Or have I ruined my best strop?

 

[Kentos]

You can try rubbing a bottle over that area to smooth it out maybe?

 

[Landri]

I would ask for pictures... but I don't know if I can handle that kind of pain...

 

[paco664]

oops... reread OP....

get in touch with tony miller... he will know...

 

[Kavik79]

You can try rubbing a bottle over that area to smooth it out maybe?

That might not be a bad idea

I would ask for pictures... but I don't know if I can handle that kind of pain...

I don't know if I could even get decent pics...they're really tiny wrinkles, but just enough to feel a distinct difference when the blade goes over them (Just in case, I tested with a razor that was in decent shape, but was planning on re-honing anyway)

oops... reread OP....

get in touch with tony miller... he will know...

good call, I'll give that a try. In the mean time, I'm just stropping more laps on just the bottom half of the strop....it's really annoying



Since I don't have pics, I'll tell you this:
It is one of the 3"x18" (stropping area, not counting hardware), "distressed" look horse hide with the nice edging grooves, for lack of a better word, like seen here:

but without the Walking Horse Stamp and with a dark chocolatey colored end pieces, silver D-rings and clasp.
I'm assuming the fabric piece is cotton, since the linen was only supposed to be available on the 2" wide strop...but it's got a herringbone weave like the linen ones showed, rather than the straight weave shown on the cotton ones...so......*shrugs*
A gift from my gf last year, I'm so annoyed at myself.....

 

[life2short1971]

I know if you wet the strop and then squeegee it with a bottle the wrinkles will come out but I am not sure that is your answer. I have used lather for this process and the draw increases as well when done.

 

[Kavik79]

okay.....so I just went and grabbed it to see about trying the pics after all. It's been 6 days now since this happened, and I noticed that the wrinkles actually feel much less prominent tonight!
I think I'm going to hold of on doing anything and just give it some daily hand rubbing over the next few days and see if they relax further without any extra help

 

[Landri]

okay.....so I just went and grabbed it to see about trying the pics after all. It's been 6 days now since this happened, and I noticed that the wrinkles actually feel much less prominent tonight!
I think I'm going to hold of on doing anything and just give it some daily hand rubbing over the next few days and see if they relax further without any extra help

Glad to hear that!

 

[strop]

Hope they come out without a lot of work. The draw on that strop is about perfect IMO.

 

[Kavik79]

I've been swamped, haven't had a chance to play with it again yet.....but, yeah, I do love the draw on this thing

 

[Kavik79]

Well, a few days later and the "self healing" of the strop hasn't seen any more progression.

When people talk about using a glass bottle, it never seems entirely clear.....use it like a rolling pin to flatten it out? Or hold the bottle against it and just rub without letting the bottle roll?

If that fails, I'll start looking for my sanding block...

 

[life2short1971]

Hold the bottle or a wooden rolling pin (I use one) and don't let it roll as you rub the affected area.

 

[Kavik79]

cool, thanks for clarifying....I'll see if I can find some free time tomorrow

Just honed up a razor tonight and that initial stropping on ~9" of leather was soooooo frustrating LOL

 

[life2short1971]

Your welcome.If it doesn't come out dry it will slightly damp.

 

[Kavik79]

well, the glass bottle did make a big improvement, but didn't totally solve the problem. I wrapped the bottle with some 1,000 grit wet/dry paper (dry) and gently sanded the whole surface with the strop flat on a cutting board. Been hand rubbing it off and on for about an hour now while watching tv, to smooth out the slight suede feeling from the sanding. So far it's looking like it will turn out looking/feeling as good as the day I bought it :insert sigh of relief smiley here:
Added bonus, I got rid of the two tiny nicks that were in it

One other thing I did realize from all this though is that one corner of the strop is roughly 3/4 the thickness of the rest of the strop. Not worn on the top, but cut thinner from the back side. It's unfortunate, I really like how soft and flexible that section is, kinda wish the whole thing was that thickness

Anyway, I think I'm all good here now, and my palms have never been smoother
thanks for all the help guys

 

[Kavik79]

And the pics, even though I never got pics of the damage

I swear, there were raised wrinkles all along this section:

and a (mostly) overall shot:

The wavy lines are not the wrinkles, that was the pattern in the leather

I'm just excited it seems to have come out good. will test it tomorrow, I'm too tired to put a blade to anything at the moment

 

[davew]

You shouldn't have to work horsehide too hard no matter what. I'm assuming that's horse butt strips, which can be hard to get in a totally clear 2 foot run to begin with.

I had the urge to oil the crap out of some raw horse butt strips that I got a while ago, especially since they were very abrasive at first. But resistance has paid off, and now a strop of my own make (read: I'm cheap sometimes) has settled into a slickness that does something lovely to an edge that cowhide wishes it could do.

Enjoy the horse strop as it is, even if you get small wrinkles in it again. Sanding it could leave some grit in it and create wear that would take a lot longer to wear off with stropping.

 

[Kavik79]

too late to not sand LOL it's already done. It's maybe not 100% as smooth as it was before, but after all that hand rubbing it's pretty damn close. I've used it a few times since and it's worked just as well as it ever did, with only the slightest increase in draw...probably more from the oil than anything else

 

[davew]

...probably more from the oil than anything else

Definitely, if your sanding strokes are along the length of the strop.

I've never used a shell strop, but if it's any better than horsebutt, I hope for my wallet's sake, I don't get the chance to. Horsebutt is fantastic stuff.