Short answer: it sure seems like it.
I had an old strop, pretty thin leather, perhaps like horsehide or maybe shell. Hopeful Ebay purchase that was more beat up than I had guessed. I need a travel strop, so I decided to see if I could answer the this thread's titular question, which I'd had for a while. Everyone always complains about grit contamination while sanding strops, and sanding leather is a pain anyway in my experience, so what else might work? A sharp cabinet scraper seemed like an obvious answer.
I clamped the strop to a board and got to work. The surface was clean and fresh within a few minutes. I wasn't timing myself but I would guess under 15. The leather is pretty smooth, not Kanoyama glassy but quite usable, and a bit of burnishing would no doubt take it further without much trouble.
Final thoughts: I've only tried this one piece of leather, which is hard, dense, tight fibered stuff. I'm not sure how well it would work on a looser grained, softer sort of hide. Perhaps a future experiment.
An approximate before/after:
I had an old strop, pretty thin leather, perhaps like horsehide or maybe shell. Hopeful Ebay purchase that was more beat up than I had guessed. I need a travel strop, so I decided to see if I could answer the this thread's titular question, which I'd had for a while. Everyone always complains about grit contamination while sanding strops, and sanding leather is a pain anyway in my experience, so what else might work? A sharp cabinet scraper seemed like an obvious answer.
I clamped the strop to a board and got to work. The surface was clean and fresh within a few minutes. I wasn't timing myself but I would guess under 15. The leather is pretty smooth, not Kanoyama glassy but quite usable, and a bit of burnishing would no doubt take it further without much trouble.
Final thoughts: I've only tried this one piece of leather, which is hard, dense, tight fibered stuff. I'm not sure how well it would work on a looser grained, softer sort of hide. Perhaps a future experiment.
An approximate before/after: