Thread: Given a cow

Well at least cow hides, a lady I know husband when alive was a saddle maker. She and I got to talking and she told me she still had a lot of leather that he used to make strops. This piece has about ten cousins like it and some others that are tan but look like the leather you would see a coat made of shiny/finished. She sold me this bit for 25 dollars and the promise that if I sold any of it half the profit would go to her, which I think is fair. My question is this do I cut it out in strop sizes or is there some kind of prep with neetsfoot oil or fromm strop dressing I should do before cutting? Any help on where and how to start would be much welcomed. Sorry for the small pics its from cell phone.

That's pretty cool. How does the leather feel when you compare it to your strops? I imagine that would be the beginning of figuring out what you needed to do to it. Maybe cut off a strip near the edge and test it out?

I think you need to smooth the leather before you ca use it for strops.
Smoothing can be done with prigression of sand papers , then you might have to condition the leather but you will have to test the strop first to know if it is a needed step.

Compared to my other strops a premium III in buffalo it is harder, not as flexable and slicker, to the vintage DD strop about as hard but not as slick.

Ck around,a half tanned hide of any bovine is worth far more than 25 bux ea.Is it a split hide? how thick is it?
Maybe some pocket money to be made here.

By eyeballing it, it appears to be 1/8 or more thick.

I'm afraid, Duane, that the only solution is to make a bunch of strops and pass them around to the Toronto guys for thorough testing...

I don't see that as a problem assuming I find out what nerds to be done to the leather before or after cutting it.

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From a saddle maker,are most likly high grade skins,from the pics the one looks like it,no scars,holes etc,most likly unsplit if around 3/16ths,the shell section has been cut off but thats common as they garner a much higher price.
Plenty of info on the net on how to prepare skins for use,most of the work is already done,good luck.

It looks like it's pretty stiff right now eh? I've heard it called tooling leather before. I think the saddle makers would get it wet and stretch it over a form. I bought some scraps from Tandy and turned them in to strops, they work well. But I put what I thought was a lot of neatsfoot oil on them to get them to be useable as strops. I still don't know if I did it right because I've never seen a 'real' store bought strop (weird how I can't bring myself to spend the money on that particular facet of straight razors). But I figure they work because my razors go weeks before needing touch up.

Anyway, good catch man. If you cut it, work it out so the smoothest, most blemish free parts make up your best pieces. And get some neatsfoot oil....