Bamboo leather strop - lessons I've learned

Yep, I made myself one about a month ago. Made from solid bamboo flooring board, oiled with linseed oil, covered with 1mm very firm cowhide on the front and 2 layers of iron-on canvas from Abbey (not the best solution, but well...).

I do not advise on using bamboo unless very good cutting tools are available. It's very tricky to work with it due to it's fibrous nature.

Also, don't try to hammer it directly with brass pins (will bend and crack the wood) or steel pins (will crack the wood). Been there, done that. The optimal approach is pre-drilling the holes with a dremel.

Also, due to the board thickness (15mm) and pins length (11mm) I had to carefully choose the pins position on both sides to not jab each other.

I had some 1mm oddly firm cow hide bellies which I thought will work the job (and it did, indeed) on which I've applied some green compound disolved in the usual paint solvent available at any hardware store (where I live it seems the white spirit is some kind of niche product nowadays...).

For the canvas I've compulsively searched for a heavy weight one without succes. After trying out two types of medium weight fusible cotton fabric the experiments revealed that the fusible canvas Abbey is selling was a good enough compromise for the job. I ended up with two layers of canvas sticked together with PVA than glued down on the board with PVA also. Brushed some Brasso on it and that was that (btw don't stick your nose in the bottle - that's a warning for those whom never used it - not only it doesn't smell like vanilla, it will instantly unclog your sinuses too - again, been there done that).

So, at the end of the day I've learned some precious lessons working this project out and ended up lately with an usable strop. Not the best, not the worst - just usable. I consider making another one in the future with better wood, maybe thicker leather and definitely better canvas.

Thanks for reading,

Cristian