Beautiful and interesting strops are something that has been on my agenda for a long time, with so many types of animals and exciting new natural and synthetic materials out there it is unlikely that the holy grail of stropping has been discovered as yet. One only has to look at the humble bovine or cow's leather, most strops are simply marketed as such, while in reality skin thicknesses and properties vary a lot, smoothness, texture, thickness, and age of the animal it was harvested from. I think it is also safe to assume genetical, cellular, and physical properties all come into play when a you drag your metal over hide. Leather in general works very well for stropping, there is no doubt about it, but finding 'the perfect' strop can be like finding a needle in a haystack!
When you start reading up on strops and what they do you get a deeper understanding of their function and abilities, but when you start to investigate exactly how this happens at microscopic/grain level, you quickly realize that there is very little information out there, there are quite a few discussions and theories on the forums, but hardly any are backed up by conclusive evidence or facts. It is mostly the top layer properties of the leather (outer skin side) that will determine what it does in terms of alighnment, burnishing and abrasion of your razor, and with very little factual information out there we thought it best is to create some strops, send them out into the world and let them build or break their own reputation.
This sealskin strop has a sturdy, tight and firm grain pattern, the corium has quite a fine, compact fibre composition as well. The leather has lots of natural valleys, but no ridges which would make it unsuitable for stropping a fine edge, the appearance of this leather is certainly beautiful, unique and full of character, identifying a genuine sealskin strop will not be hard to do at all! Stropping on this softer leather is easy and comfortable, angling the razor to have the entire bevel meet up with the surface is similarly easy, even more so than most other strops of a similar thickness. The strop has a light draw and making a full hollow 6/8 razor sing it's 'swish-swash song' is easy as pie. The leather is just over 3 mm thick and flexible enough to roll and fold with out damaging or cracking the stropping surface.
This strop is made in our 'Long length' which is our most popular dimension; about 770 mm long with a stropping surface that is around 440 mm long and 75 mm wide, enough to cover the blade length of most razors out there.
The strop is cut and stitched by hand, the handle is thinner, smoother and shaped differently than out medium range strops, the edges are also burnished to give the effect of a well polished, uniform edge. We are currently offering this range in black, tan and brown
The canvas end has a snap fastner that clips on to leather side of the strop, this prevents the canvas side from dangling down when using the leather side, it is also useful if you prefer your linen to have the harder leather as a base when stropping on it. We have also added a swivel end to this strop as you'd be using two different sides, the need for unhooking and re-attaching your strop's D-ring is eliminated.
These strops will appeal to many because of their popular size and choice of appearance, something that is particularly interesting about them is the way they reflect the sun, look closely when you move it around, like billions of little stars blinking at you.
We have a few more ideas in this range, so please provide feedback to help us offer some more items just the way you like them.