belt leather as homemade strop

Let me start by saying there is no way I can spend $80+ on a strop at this point in my life so, I have been trying to think of ways of making my own hanging strop. I have come across some belt leather that I can get in a 2 1/2in width and is just plain ole' cowhide. Do y'all think that this would work to make a strop out of and if so would i need to do anything to it before using it?

thanks for all your input!​

Many of us enjoy going overboard on strops as part of the hobby. However, for function, you can strop on a bunch of different inexpensive options. People have used seatbelts, newspaper, jeans, belts, etc. Short answer, you can likely get by with a homemade strop made of belt leather (pics or more details will help). Just search through some of the DIY threads in the strop forum to get some best practices on conditioning,etc. that may help you in the process.

Best of luck and keep us posted.

Last week I was traveling but forgot to pack a strop. I used my bad-*** jeans leather belt and it worked fine.

There is an online vendor with strops for under $20. I don't believe they are an approved vendor so you might have to perform some internet searches.

I used Star Shaving. Slow shipping and no comms, but I would order from them again because of the quality of the strop.

buca sells strops for $13 or $25 with balsa pasted wood strop
http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/436322-GD-800-stainless-for-sale-shave-ready

I've never tried it, but maybe strop paste would help too!

you can find cheaper options in the hobbyist section

To answer the OP's question the cowhide would likely work as is and could almost surely be made to work with a little work. As an experiment I sanded the flesh side of an old belt, boned in hard carnauba wax, and used it exclusively on one of my razors for over 30 shaves. It was a bit narrow at 1.5" but worked great. I would not hesitate to use a 2.5" piece of the same on all of my razors if I had to. Performance is great, but it lacks in aesthetics.

The belt should work fine. 2 1/2 inches is an ideal width promoting an X-stroke technique. Your belt might be better than many of the cheap strops being sold. Some of the workmanship on the cheap strops is very poor, unnecessarily so. Just lazy crap workmanship. Stick with the belt, it should work fine. As previously mentioned a closeup picture of the surface would help.

And stay away from pastes. Don't put anything on the strop other than the palm of your hand and your razor. If it needs cleaning you can take a clean wet washcloth and rub the surface and then let the belt air dry.

Recently, I saw a 9 dollar leather stop online.
I'd imagine that it would work fine.
I think Illinois strops run 30ish. They're known to perform well.

A belt can work if the edges aren't whacked; even if they are, a little sand paper can fix most issues.

McMaster-Carr sells the belt leather stuff for machinery/industrial purposes. Vegetable-tanned is the one you want. For 2-1/2" I've ordered a 5" width, then cut this in half following the length. One side is left as is and the other is sanded to 180x-240x and pasted. Works well IME/IMO. Just be sure to wipe off the blade in moving from the pasted strop to the unpasted one if you choose to use a paste.