Paddle Strops

Hand Made Paddle Strops - Double Sided

These are generously proportioned paddle strops with solid hardwood frames, mainly English Beech.  They are double sided - with two leather stropping panels or one leather and one hard wool felt panel.  What you see in the pictures accompanying each individual product is what you get - there are no accessories like cases or hanging gear, unless explicitly stated in the description.

Paddle Strops make a great alternative to hanging strops, and are said by many to be ideal for learning on - this is because one variable is taken out of the mix, that of the correct tension.  All you have to do is concentrate on stropping.  Having two sides makes these paddles almost as versatile as a hanging strop - one side (usually hard wool felt) can be coated with an abrasive paste, spray or powder like green chrome oxide (see my listings) to touch-up a dull blade before finishing stropping on the leather panel.

The leather panels are made from a variety of tried and tested stropping leathers.  Being a hand-worked natural product, these leathers often show small surface blemishes and faint lines, but each one is selected to use specifically on the delicate edge of a razor without harming it, and any marks are not considered defects or faults.  I use prototypes of all the products that I make, so I know what will and what will not affect or compromise performance - and those that dont pass the tests are discarded!  Note that hard wool felt is a natural product, and often has small areas and specks of a different colour - this is not a defect.  Hard wool felt is compressed into a dense medium and is a suitable alternative to canvas - it does not have to be pasted or powdered.  Note that if treated with water-based sprays, you need to be careful not to saturate the product or it will swell and the surface will become irregular.  This can be remedied by thorough drying and abrading the surface back to flat again, but prevention is better than cure and several light sprays with drying time between them are preferable!

Each leather stropping panel usually offers at least 12" of usable stropping length, plus another inch or so for the makers logo (sunk into the leather so it does not matter if the blade passes over it) by either 2" or 3" wide unless otherwise stated.

The total length of each strop including the handle is about 18" and the packaged weight is about

Some Observations Concerning Paddle Strops

You may have noticed that some manufacturers offer paddles with two or three panels of rather thick wood, saying that this configuration allows some "give" - think about that for a moment.  If you have to press hard enough to deflect a wooden paddle you are pressing way too hard (unless the wooden panels are extremely thin - in the region of a few mm or so).  I don't think that this configuration is at all necessary - it may look nice, it may save the manufacturer some material costs and it may allow the manufacturer to charge an elevated price for an over-engineered product, but pressing enough to get any give on most types of this paddle I have seen is going to damage a delicate razor.

Some people advise the use of a loom-type paddle strop, often of a type that sits on a bench with threaded rails to adjust the tension.  They are said to be some sort of halfway house between a flat paddle and a hanging strop, but I don't think they have the advantages of either.  A flat, solid-bed paddle strop is ideal for those that want to use pastes - it does not deflect significantly to contribute to rounding the edge, like both a loom and a hanging strop will.  The flat paddle is slim and ideal for travelling, whereas the loom is usually far more bulky and heavy.  A hanging strop has a lot of length available, more than the loom usually.  If you do not release the tension on a loom type strop the belt will stretch - you do not have to remember to release the tension on a hanging strop!