Anyone tested making a hanging leather strop?

I've never made a hanging strop - can't help there.

I have made a few paddle strops when I was younger because it was the only way to get a strop before the Internet round where I lived.

With paddle strops I found that the leather itself didn't matter so much as the support. It was tricky getting a cheap unwarped truly flat piece of wood. One thing that worked was gluing a layer of balsa to the wood and lapping it flat on sandpaper then gluing thin leather to it.

Antique mahagony was best for the support and a layer of cork or rubber best between that and the leather.
 
I have the idea of making a paddle strop with one side smooth leather and the other rough, maybe need to sand the rough a bit, then adding some cromox to the rough side. Also thinking of the same design but without cromox and the rough side as a linen substitute when stropping. Then option one is gluing leather to paddle. Option two is using velcro to hold leather in place avoiding the risk of messsing things up when gluing. Trial and error to come...
 
I have the idea of making a paddle strop with one side smooth leather and the other rough, maybe need to sand the rough a bit, then adding some cromox to the rough side. Also thinking of the same design but without cromox and the rough side as a linen substitute when stropping. Then option one is gluing leather to paddle. Option two is using velcro to hold leather in place avoiding the risk of messsing things up when gluing. Trial and error to come...

I have always found that a black paste on plain leather works better than suede / rough leather. YMMV, but I prefer any paste on plain leather. I think it disperses the paste better and it's more effective.

If you do want rough leather, I suggest using a wire suede brush and using white strop paste which I find mimics canvas best. CrOx is a bit too harsh, and I have never found that suede does much.

Not sure about velcro. Might make the surface too unstable.

Line with cork, rubber or felt underneath both stropping surfaces. It really helps to have a bit of give.
 
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