Something I learned about wool felt and water

I have wool felt on the back of my strop that I've been keeping on the towel rack next to my sink. I was getting some water splashes on the leather when I'd reach for a towel, so I turned it around to let the felt take some splashes. Bad idea. Now there are several raised bumps in the upper part of the felt where water hit it and made the wool swell.

That's the only explanation I've got for what happened. Figure I need to just unscrew it, flip it over and keep it away from water.

 

Yeah it is actually "Pressed Felt" in most cases and will dimple around water

I remember some discussion about using it instead of Linen years ago and although I think it performs as well the dimples were the reason I moved mine to simply Diamond Spray use...

 

You could try re-pressing it with a couple pieces of wood and weight

 

would a stream iron smooth it out?

 

It might but wool will shrink. I would try pressing with weight or clamping between to flat objects

 

I bought two wool straps from SRD and when they arrived they had bumps on them which I assume were from water. I used a body shop sanding block with some 220 sand paper with the strop laid out on a flat counter top and they seem to be fine now

 

I was thinking about sanding them flat. Might still do that. The strop (English Bridle leather from Star Shaving) is built with Chicago screws, so I just flipped the felt piece over.