Cleaning the linen on an old strop

[Magruder]

Found an old strop at an antique store. It looks like one of your typical barber shop strops that clipped onto the barber's chair.

The leather is in great shape. The linen is also in good shape but it's ugly. When it was new it was probably white or nearly white, but now it's about the color of a cigar, and feels waxy. I'd like to clean it. The question is, how?

A related question is, what is it dirty from? It looks like it might be a buildup of shaving soap. (I don't know why there would be shaving soap on the strop, but that's how it looks.) Or maybe it's discolored from cigarette smoke.

I've soaked it in water and laundry detergent for an afternoon, and it looks the same as when I started. (The strop comes apart, so I'm dealing with just the linen piece and not the leather.) I don't want to scrub it with a brush because I don't want to damage it.

I'm not sure what else to try. I'm sure that soaking it in a weak bleach solution for 5 or 10 minutes would make it look better, but that wouldn't necessarily get it clean.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[Thebigspendur]

The only way to clean it is with a scrub brush. personally I don't think its worth the effort. You could buy a new linen strop for a few bucks.

Eventually they all become discolored. A combination of dust in the environment, oil on the blade, metal from the blade and who knows what else.

[vgod]

soak in the laundry stuff like you said, then take a brush to it. as long as it is a synthetic bristle brush, you should be fine. scrub it in the water with the detergent.

good luck.

vgod

[Magruder]

Here's an update on the strop.

I tried cleaning it, by several methods, and nothing made it look better. Here's what I did:

Soaked in warm water, dish soap, and laundry detergent for an hour. Then rinsed. I did this more than once.

After the soak, scrubbed gently with a nylon scrub brush.

Poured full-strength laundry detergent on to the linen, and worked it in with my fingers. Let it soak for an hour, then rinsed well.

And in none of these efforts did my water show dirt or grime coming out of the strop.

So I went for the big gun. I mixed about a gallon of water with a quarter-cup of bleach, and let it sit for 5 minutes. The linen looked a bit better, so I left it in for another 5 minutes, rinsed thoroughly, and let it dry. Much better now, but it still looked rather dingy, so I did the 10-minute bleach soak a second time.

My linen piece looks a heck of a lot better now. It's still stained, and one side is a lot worse than the other, but I guess you could say it's presentable.

After I wrapped up I realized that I hadn't tried ammonia. I know from my days as a window washer that ammonia is what you use to get the nicotine residue from cigarette smoke off of windows (and walls), so an ammonia treatment is worth a try.