3" Wide Tallow Tanned Leather & Heavyweight Cotton Double Hanging Strop
This is a very good quality, no-nonsense solid and reliable strop, hand-made in England from quality cowhide and heavy duty cotton. The cowhide is a top-quality natural vegetable tanned item with a difference - it has undergone a traditional european fatty tannage which has left the leather very soft and supple (note that Dovo yellow paste is composed mainly of tallow, a natural animal fat product). Like all natural products the leather panels have small marks and unique traces, none of which will impair the ability to finely hone a razor - it has been specially hand-selected for this job!
The leather hardware attachment flap is screw-rivetted to the stropping panels and the handles are sewn to the strop. The edges of each strop panel are lightly bevelled so that they are less likely to catch the razor, and there is a pinstripe embossed into the leather on either side as a simple, but elegant decoration. The leather is about 3.0mm thick on average. There is a swivel attachment provided (see pictures) to hang the strop by. The handle is real leather with an embossed antique lizarde pattern and is comfortably contoured and padded to firmly fit the hand - it is not a cheap flat stitched handle that you find on most modern strops!
The cotton is very heavy-duty and of the best quality, woven in a continuous tube like the old-fashioned strops used to use. The hardware is very heavy-duty too!
The overall length from end-to-end (including hardware and handle) is 32.5 inches and the width is a good 3.0 inches wide. The stropping area (ie: the length available for stropping between the end of the leather hardware panel and the top of the handle) is about 18 inches - more than adequate! (some brand-name strops only have 12 inches of stropping surface). The makers mark is embossed into the leather - not raised - so it may be stropped over.
Please note that this is an English handmade product, made by one individual - not a factory item made by machine, so you should expect signs of handwork such as slightly irregular stitching, etc. Leather is a natural substance which also shows some marks and slight imperfections, none of which will interefere with the ability of this strop to produce a super-fine edge on a razor. I always make a test prototype of every strop I sell, selecting the leather that has representations of all marks and imperfections for the test prototype, and I use it punishingly so I am very familiar with the materials I use and can personally recommend them. The items I sell are made from leather that has far less pronounced markings, etc, than the test prototypes - anything not meeting my exacting standards is rejected!
This is a heavy strop - packaged weight will be around 900gms
