Maintaining a strop

Maintaining your strop is very important if you want to enjoy it for a long time. Therefore it is useful to remove the compound of your strop every now and then and use some leather balm. This really sounds more exciting than it is (and it didn’t sound exciting in the first place). You can lubricate it with a cloth or an old t-shirt and let it affect the strop. We have different pastas and balms on our website. Some people find it more enjoyable to do this with their own hands. Matter of preference.

Repeat the rubbing, if necessary, if you notice the balm affecting the strop very quickly. Continue until the strop is saturated and then wipe it with a dry cloth to massage the balm in the strop and remove excess balm. Leave the strop overnight to let the balm do its work properly.

By giving your leather strop a refresh every now and then, you keep it flexible. Also, (micro) cracks are prevented this way.

Storing the strop

We advise to store the strop in a sealed plastic bag. This way, you avoid dehydration, but more importantly: you keep your strop clean. Imagine that a grain of sand is on the strop when moving your finely polished cut over it. Then you will have a very large scratch on your blade pretty soon. Nightmare. Prevent it! When using multiple strops in different grain sizes we also advise to prevent pollution. So, don’t put your micron 5 strop on your micron 1 strop. You risk having larger particles on your fine strop that produce larger scratches than you would like.

Strop away!

Now you know all about preparing, maintaining, and using a leather strop. Do you have any tips for us following this article? Ways to strop even easier or better? Please let us know! Send us an email, tweet or message through Facebook. We welcome all feedback!