Alternative strop materials

I'm looking into making some hanging strops and have pleanty of ideas of what leather to use, but I'm very interested in alternative materials for a cloth strop. Two materials that come to mind are raw silk which I have seen on a thread, but not much conclusion on it. And the other material would be satin as it's readily available as 3" satin ribbon.

I what do you guys think about these materials, or any suggestions for other alternative materials

Straight shaving has several hundred years worth of experience and research behind it at this point and so far nobody has beat genuine flax linen. There is also a shortage of flax linen strops in the marketplace. Fill that shortage and you will have many customers at the ready.

Flax linen has the kind of abrasive properties which people look for in a cloth component, as well as the cleaning properties.

Silk would be fine to clean, but I dont think it would do much to knock the edge into shape, say after honing with a coticule.

Has anyone compared the effectiveness of hemp to that of flax linen in strops? I use the herringbone pattern hemp canvas from http://store.rawganique.com/hemp-webbing-p/web-ft.htm but I'm too new to know what I'm doing, and I've never used flax linen...

I have never used hemp, but the materials are very close to one another. A good side by side test would be interesting.

The Kanayama cloth component is hemp like.

pantoporos aporos said:

Has anyone compared the effectiveness of hemp to that of flax linen in strops? I use the herringbone pattern hemp canvas from http://store.rawganique.com/hemp-webbing-p/web-ft.htm but I'm too new to know what I'm doing, and I've never used flax linen...

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I've been using hemp strops for a couple years and really like them. As supplied, the hemp webbing that I bought was unusable IMO as it shed nasty fibers almost like fiberglass. I came up with a way of conditioning it so that it became a pleasant material to strop on. The condensed process is summarized in post 10 http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/401973-Hemp-strop?highlight=

Legion said:

The Kanayama cloth component is hemp like.

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Myself and several others have speculated that it is a hemp strop for many years, but I still don't have that with 100% certainty so have been unwilling to say it is hemp.

Brianskeet said:

Myself and several others have speculated that it is a hemp strop for many years, but I still don't have that with 100% certainty so have been unwilling to say it is hemp.

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It's apparently a fabric called zukku, which is also known as doek or "Duck Cloth". Apparently a linen canvas. I don't know much more about it though. The only source I have for that is it is what Takeshi refers to it as on aframes.

stoop said:

It's apparently a fabric called zukku, which is also known as doek or "Duck Cloth". Apparently a linen canvas. I don't know much more about it though. The only source I have for that is it is what Takeshi refers to it as on aframes.

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Thank you. Unfortunately we are still stuck on what they are making the cloth from. Under the scope it does not look like cotton and appears very flax like, but hemp is also a dead ringer for flax. Here are a couple pix for reference.

Flax linen


Kanayama canvas

Those do look really similar.

I can't find it now, but I read an article that said to tell the difference between hemp fabric and flax required wetting the material and then putting it under a microscope to see the direction of the twist in individual fibers. Or in other words, well beyond my skill level with textiles.

Get a foam core nylon from AL at big easy tools. Great stuff. I prefer it to any other cloth that I've used. Hemp, waxed linen 5 other vintage linens and a flax from scrupleworks. 8 bucks.or.so for 2 feet plus ship.