Make Your Own Leather Strop For The Field! DIY

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Video Transcription

so I need a new strop for the field and there have been questions in the past so I decided to take the time and film it for those interested [Music]

you

so doing this kind of stuff at home what you the reason you're doing this is to keep cost as slow as possible and what you need is well if you've been playing around in the woods and all that you probably have all this at home already which is you know basic tools and you know basic leather some wood that you probably already have somewhere hiding that's not doing anything so I've got one more little task to do and that's to cook my leather at the right length now I didn't take time to video all the wood cutting and all that stuff I mean it's all stuff you you know you know how to do right [Music]

all right so basically I got my two pieces that I want already cut let's talk about the wood first what I basically like to have as a size is about an inch wide by five inches long by about a little over a quarter maybe 3/8 thick this is the size I'm really comfortable with dropping the knife I don't need any longer or wider or thicker you know you want to try and just for the field so you want to try and keep this as compact and as small as you can but at the same time useful to use excuse me in the sense that you don't want to make it so compact that you can't really use it well or it's too dangerous to use it now three-eighths I mean you can go half an inch if you want but you don't want it any smaller than that and thickness because you want to be able to grab it comfortably okay and having your fingers always out of the way as you hold it I have a knife I can I can strop it without you know touching my fingers so that goes for the wood this is a piece of maple but you know you can use whatever you have at home it doesn't have to be hardwood I mean it's just a straw for the leather you don't want leather that's already you know been dyed or all that stuff or waterproofed you want it rough with this so you can put some compound compound can go in well and you know so works good for you now this side here is it's gonna have to be sanded down so the next step for me after cutting my pieces the right size let's do a little bit of sanding so what I'll do first is you know square off as much as I can the ends so it fits well right now I have an 80 grit paper which does the job quite fast we don't want any splinters as you use this okay so now what I'll do is use a 220 grit I'm going to leave this rough side cuz that's the that's where I'm gonna glue the piece of leather so you want it to be rough but I want this side here to be nice and smooth again so there's no splinters and I don't want to [Music]

takes much time [Music]

I don't want to rock rounds off the corners

I don't want to round off the corners because I want to have a good you know [Music]

what how do you say it I want to be able to hold it steady and you know if it's round it tends to want to slip in your hands so next I'm going to take the leather and the piece of course if you have a raw on two sides that's awesome but sad that I didn't have that so I'm gonna have to rough this up so I'm gonna use my 80 again and make sure it's all nice and sanded down so the glue has a place to grip okay so after you've sending it down you're satisfied you clean it up again you want to keep this as costly as possible if you do have a multi-purpose glue I got one here it's the patch spray this adhesive excuse me and just make sure that it's good enough to stick leather to wood now most of all most of us have that at home well I'm pretty blessed as I do have it so to make a permanent bond this type of glue I need to put an even coat on one side and another even coat on the other and wait about five minutes before I put them together so put an even I know this is porous so put a little thicker don't when it's thick enough you don't want to miss the size because that's where they tend to okay that should be good

just put a little bit more here on the side I want to see there you go now I'm satisfied okay so let me show you see I know if you can see that but it's nice and thick not too thick but thick enough that I know these are gonna bond especially if you have poor stuff like leather and and wood so we'll wait about five minutes and we'll put these two together

okay so now it's time to put these two together making sure that just chicken the see look up the right hey there's any imperfections you don't need to worry about that you can make sure you don't want to put any glue the top where are you going to strop make sure that especially the size are well stuck now this is a fast curing glue

okay so what I usually do now so I'll put a Scott towel over it and just put a heavy book and let it sit for maybe an hour and we'll be back so now she's pretty much cured I mean it's it's still gonna continue to cure but doesn't stop me from continuing my work now if you have some little gaps sticking out you know there's nothing sticking out here but maybe a little bit in the corner you want to trim that off I usually trim the corners anyway because every time there's a little accident that happens you know an accent what I mean by that is to under to unglue the leather it's always because of these corners so what I will do is just take care of this little corner just be careful not to take too much off I'll do the same to the other corners okay it's just just to prevent from ever I do you know hit it well it's not gonna grab on to it so I just do that I keep this in flat much as I can we'll do the other side of course I don't have this probably the best tool to do this but use what you got at home you know if you don't have to go out and buy anything that's the purpose of this video and it's not just to make you know drops anything that you may need we have most of us have a lot of junk laying around why not use that junk make it useful okay let's see here this one is a little bit on the edge so I'm gonna take one whole chunk off here I'm not even in the camera anyway so let's take whatever I don't need off here this so it doesn't don't hit on the piece of wood here yeah should be nuts so bad the other size a little bit okay now my next step after that now that I've done my corners I'm satisfied when I did glue this obviously it's a spray so there's a little bit that went on the side here of the wood so I just want to gently take that off so I just use a 220 sandpaper just let me shake it off see it just takes that stickiness is completely gone but I didn't do it just for that so let me just send these four sides and I'll show you the next step alright so now that I'm satisfied with my sanding the glue is off on the side my corners are nice and send it down to like hello like a want now you can basically leave it this way it's totally up to you I mean it's just a strop it's not something that's you know staying outside for long periods of time but I have some stain here now it's not the stain I would have liked to put you know well you'd like to a nice brown or woodsy color green but remember trying to keep this low-cost so I have this black so that's what we're gonna go with now this is a water base and usually there's always too much that comes out all the time

hardly need any of this Oh baby I got it this time and on camera - Wow it's cool okay so you don't need too much and yeah I'm using my fingers so basically just and you know put them in the you know even between the leather between the leather and the wood you know just to keep water out basically note that it's gonna be in water but who knows you don't need a big coat something it's okay if he puts them on the side of the leather just like dyeing it anyway

I've actually dyed leather with this stuff and it works it's not for leather but it still works okay so I'm going to do this everywhere I want I will be right back okay so here we go

final product I put some Messiah TR didn't completely fill up the side of the leather just to give it a little look then put too thick of it just just still see the grain of the wood covered the ends there you go it's basically done now what I do is I'll use a black compound okay as you can see this is a new one where I get my compound is DLT trading okay DLT trading now you can probably find it somewhere else I'm just telling you where I got it I basically play with two compounds the black and the white on my strop at home some people will now you can do this you can you know put another piece of leather on this side so you'll basically have a coarser grit in one side and the other side will be finer but I don't think it's necessary in the woods I think all you need is this black one this black one is 3000 grit and it will bring back we'll bring back the knives to a sharp-edged pretty quickly now there's all kinds of ways to load I'm just giving you some people will feed up a little bit heat up the leather but I don't I just basically take my time load it up

so there you have it pretty good for now you can load it up better than that I won't bore you with all that but you basically have yourself a nice little tool compact lightweight and it'll keep your knifes sharp now if you want a more complete kit and you're afraid of your knives you know sometimes it happens happens to me you know quite often that you'll have a rolled-up edge especially on Scandi grind you can add yourself a dc4 from fallkniven to your kit so now you have a full kit in the woods that doesn't take too much place you can put an elastic to hold that or inner tube whatever fallkniven obviously dc4 can be expensive so if you don't want that and all you can only need to do is bring yourself some sandpaper and do the same job and just roll it around your piece of wood here and use the strop as a base when you do use the sandpaper to you know fix a rolled-up edge so you can comfortably use your piece and just drop your knife this way [Music]

go super well and if you're still afraid you know sometimes of cutting your fingers or anywhere on your hand what you can do is cut yourself a notch on a piece of dead wood let's say a dead tree that's fallen or in a branch that's fallen and you carve yourself a quick notch to be able to put this in not too deep just deep enough for the wood so your leather sticks out and then you have yourself a stable table to just you know strop your knife so I hope this was interesting for you I'm happy with my little strop now you can make yours thanks for watching this is micro chef Partners bye

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