Stropping my chip carving knife

Over on the Neander forum here, we've had about 1000 discussions on stropping. But I want to share what is working for me as a beginning chip carver, just to get it into the archives to help the next person.

This week I bought a copy of Dennis Moor's chip carving workbook. Very good book for the beginner - honestly, I was surprised to found it more helpful than Barton's. Anyway, Moor says to make a strop of 2 pieces of leather, each about 12" long. Glued one with the rough side facing out and applied Lee Valley green compound. Glued the other smooth side out and kept it plain (no compound).

After honing the edge on ceramic stones, I stropped the blade about 15 strokes on each side, on the rough side of that strop. Then I repeated it on the smooth side. The result was able to slice a credit card receipt in half by simply touching the edge to the paper. On basswood, I get very smooth cuts even across the grain. I still want that kit that mychipcarving.com sells, but this is still a notable improvement in my knife edge.

(When I stropped a plane iron this way, just now, I easily pulled shavings that were 0.002" thick. And I think I could have done better if I'd played with the adjusting wheel a little more.)

Fred

I got the same sort of results on some Flexcut knives I bought for spoon carving. I discovered strops a few months ago and have made a few. They work very well (as you've noticed) for plane irons and chisels. The polish they give my carving knives really smooths out the carving process. Green wood carves like soap. Dry wood carves like green wood. I sharpened a kitchen knife last night prior to dinner prep and gave it the strop treatment. It was like a scalpel when I was done.

I know what you mean and scapel is a good description, Rob!

The thing I learned from Moor's book was to put compound on the rough side of the leather and strop. I'd been putting compound on the smooth side and stropping. They got sharp - but not scalpel sharp. Until now. :)

I did something similar. My knife strop is about 3/4 wide and mounted on a piece of oak about a foot long. I use it like a knife steel, but with the cutting edge of the knife trailing instead of leading. One side of the strop is regular cowhide I got from a saddlemaker. The rough side was kind of wooly so I mounted it smooth side out. The other side of the strop is horse butt, mounted smooth side out. The horse butt is hard and slick compared to the cowhide. The cowhide side gets regular green Veritas compound. The horse butt side gets a very light application of some Flexcut Gold compound I got with my Flexcut knives. It seems to be very fine and is a good match to the hard horse butt. After my stones, I strop the green side first and finish on the gold side. About 25 strokes per side. I have a similar setup for my chisels and plane irons, but have separate stropping blocks about 3" wide x 10" long. Next on the list to make are some contoured versions for my bent gouges.

I have a rubbermaid container that I use as a portable carving box. It's about 8×11". I have a few short pieces of leather that I keep in there, charged with different grades of compound. I give my knife a few strokes as needed while carving basswood, and almost never have to break out a stone.

Hi Tony. I agreee. I almost never have to get out a stone either. I'm guessing the bevel holds up so well because I'm only cutting Basswood. I'm guessing the stones might be needed more if I was working something harder.

I haven't used a stone on the knives since the original preparation.

To renew the edge for a while I used leather strops with a compound added. The best was very thin pigskin glued on a board, found in a carving shop.

Then I read some controversy about stropping on leather - some claim the indentation into the softness of the leather will cause rounding over on the edge. I suspect that would depend on the softness of the leather, the angle of blade, and the pressure used.

I've since switched to the sharping kit here: https://mychipcarving.com/product/knife-sharpening-kit/
It uses four strips of extremely fine adhesive-backed abrasive film fastened to a hard surface. It's a square with the strips on the edges so you rotate the board to change the grits. I use the method in their instructions with a certain number of stokes per each grit with water sprayed on the on surface. I follow up with a very light stropping on the thin pigskin leather board treated with the yellow honing compound often used with carving gouges.

Remember, the only thing that counts on chip carving knives is the first little bit of the tip of the knife, the depth of your deepest cut!

BTW, I've gone to honing/polishing compound on hard MDF for all my woodturning skew chisels instead of the big leather strop I used for years. I think it works better. I resawed pieces of 1" MDF to give thinner boards (maybe 6x6") with slightly rough surfaces that take the compound well from the sticks. It's easy to see how well they work by the black marks on the MDF from the steel removed! These make the skews shaving sharp in a few stokes and can be touched up numerous times before resharpening. I hold the skew bevel flat on against the surface then lift the handle a tiny bit for give make a one degree and use a fair amount of pressure.

JKJ

Very good info. I also have been putting polishing compound on the smooth side. I'm looking forward to trying it the other way.