leather strop

[Mike Hopkins]

I picked up a piece of hard leather which I will glue to a piece of scrap hardwood. Does it matter which type of glue I use?

Thanks, Mike

[Ray Sheley]

I just used contact cement. It's soaked with baby (mineral) oil, and full of green rouge and it's still holding firm.

[Phillip Pattee]

Mike,

I honestly don't think is matters. I don't even have mine glued down. I have a board going across the top with screws that go through the leather like the one here at craftsman studios. http://www.craftsmanstudio.com/html_p/C!000001.htm

[Danny Burns]

Don't use any glue. Oh and skip using the leather as well, and just apply the honing compound to the piece of maple/MDF surface instead.

If you find that the compound needs to be worked into the wood, then use a heat gun to melt the wax base that these compounds usually come in, and it will flow into the wood.

Leather, no matter how light the pressure applied, dubs the edge, because any pressure distorts the leather surface, and it springs back around the edge of the blade.
Of course some just use a very light amount of pressure, and so they get just a very light amount of dubbing.

Some seeing this dubbing done by soft leather, switched to a real hard butt leather to try and avoid/minimize this dubbing. This of course was back in the olden days before MDF.