135
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #220,069 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★☆☆☆
If you are buying this for a straight razor, don't waste your money
tl:dr - "Great decorative item or commemorative gift" translates as, "Not suitable for actual stropping your straight razors"
There are plenty of good reviews on this item so I may have simply gotten a lemon, but this is why I rate it so low.
1) It came heavily cupped, making it unable to strop a razor at all.
2) Stiff as a board, (made correcting the cupping a real pain).
3) It was waxed too heavily, it had no grab whatsoever on my straight razor.
4) It came with no instructions on breaking in a strop, when it so desperately needed it.
5) Useless bull's head imprint means 5 inches less of usable strop.
If you don't know what cupping is, it is where the edges of the strop are raised higher than the rest, so when you strop the only parts of the blade that actually touch the strop are the toe and heel. To correct this, I had to do a lot of research online to find ways of flattening the surface without damaging it, and put in about 4 hours of work over a few days time to finally get it into a state that where it would actually strop the whole of my blade.
On top of the cupping, it was waxed too heavily so it didn't grab the razor at all when I finally did get it flat. This involved more research and treatment to correct. Meanwhile I can't shave because I can't properly strop my razors.
I don't give it 1 star because after all the work I put into it to make it usable, it does a decent job, and probably will get better with time. It was simply unusable out of the box, with no instruction on how get it in appropriate condition. This was the real deal breaker for me. If an item needs breaking in or conditioning, fine, but that needs to be part of the product description, or at least come with information on how to get it into proper condition.
Bottom line: Don't buy unless you are willing to put in a couple days treating this strop to get it in a usable condition. I've since found that even the best strop makers have plain strops that are not much more expensive than this one, do yourself a favor and get one of those.
