using a strop

[Tom Haney]

I'm wanting to know exactly how to use a strop in my sharpening routine.

I've got me an old leather belt, really smooth and tight leather. Ans I picked up a stick of yellow flexcut compound from woodcraft as well.

I've been using the strop with the flexcut a few times now. i'm not seeing any miraculous improvements other than polishing to a higher level. I go the opposite direction as honing, keep the blade at as close to the bevel angle as possible and put a good amount of pressure on it while making my pass. i also strop the back side of the blades as well. but i do this flat on the strop. (no angle)

i usually hone on waterstones 1000/6000. Keep the stones really flat, check my scratch pattern to make sure im getting even coverage, etc.

any advice on perfecting this?

thanks

[Jim Koepke]

Tom,

Welcome to the Creek. Your profile does not show your location. If you live close to other Creekers, you might find one or two willing to offer some one on one time.

I do not use stropping now as much as back when my razor needed to be stropped. Like so many things, too much of a good thing can be bad.

As you have noticed, the strop does make the bevel and the back much smoother. More than just a little can start to "smooth" or round the edge the honing creates. Even with a fresh surface on my 8000 stone, there are still minute scratches on the face of the bevel and the back. This is where a couple passes on the strop can clean these up to make a finer edge. Much more than two or three strokes, and you can start to loose the edge.

Imagine the surface of the strop being compressed as the back or the bevel is being pulled over it. As the edge passes a point, the material will decompress in an upward motion on the very edge you are trying to improve.

After performing a few cuts with a tool, the edge may be microscopically pushed over. Many woodworkers will give it a few more strokes on the strop to renew the edge. It is similar to my practice of as soon as it is noticed a blade is not performing at its best, it gets a few laps on a stone. The sooner and edge is attended to, the less work is required to renew the edge. One can go a little overboard on this and wear the edge quicker. It is all a balance. After doing this a while, you will notice each cut gets a little more rough. All too often, we compare each cut to the last one instead of to the first one off the stones.

That is all theory, now someone who has the practical use of stropping can come in and give a real answer.

jim

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Tom

I have a tutorial on stropping in this article ..

Stropping with Green Rouge verses Diamond Paste: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Woodwor...mondpaste.html

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Maurice Ungaro]

Thank you Derek - Very straight forward and concise! I had been wondering about the virtues of diamond paste over those of the green rouge.

[John Eaton]

I find on very sharp tools, say those with acute angles for carving, the strop will revive the edge very quickly - I try to keep a strap near where I'm working. I can usually strop a handful of times before needing to freshen up the edge on a stone and because the strope is right there it saves a lot of time.

-- John

[george wilson]

Jim is right: Too much stropping will begin to round the edge too much. This is why I never power strop.

[Sandy Stanford]

I'm wanting to know exactly how to use a strop in my sharpening routine.

I've got me an old leather belt, really smooth and tight leather. Ans I picked up a stick of yellow flexcut compound from woodcraft as well.

I've been using the strop with the flexcut a few times now. i'm not seeing any miraculous improvements other than polishing to a higher level. I go the opposite direction as honing, keep the blade at as close to the bevel angle as possible and put a good amount of pressure on it while making my pass. i also strop the back side of the blades as well. but i do this flat on the strop. (no angle)

i usually hone on waterstones 1000/6000. Keep the stones really flat, check my scratch pattern to make sure im getting even coverage, etc.

any advice on perfecting this?

thanks

If you use very fine grit media like waterstones, 2000 grit sandpaper, ceramic stones, and the like the truth of the matter is that you don't need to strop at all, and in fact in doing so you are probably giving back some of the sharpness you created on your finest stone.

Stropping makes sense if you use oilstones since they simply don't clean up the wire edge completely like very, very fine grit media does.

Some people use a strop as a proxy for a fine stone to which I would say just go back to your fine stone and leave it at that.

If you do decide to strop, for God's sake use paste and not those ridiculous wax bars that are meant for power stropping where the wheel heats up the wax binders releasing the polishing media to the wheel. Glopping up a piece of horse-butt with one of these crayons is silly. Get some valve paste or Dovo strop paste and work the paste into the strop completely and the leather will serve up the right amount of polishing media. The leather, itself, has efficacy in removing shards of the wire edge. Don't completely obscure it with wax based stropping compound. You only need a small amount of paste and not necessarily covering the entire surface of your strop. You can strop on bare leather and there are times when it makes perfect sense to do exactly that.

[James Scheffler]

If you use very fine grit media like waterstones, 2000 grit sandpaper, ceramic stones, and the like the truth of the matter is that you don't need to strop at all, and in fact in doing so you are probably giving back some of the sharpness you created on your finest stone.

I go up to 2000 grit sandpaper and then hand strop using a wax-based chromium oxide compound. I find the strop makes a definite improvement, as evaluated by taking free-hand shavings of pine endgrain. I just got a sheet of 3M 2500 sandpaper from Lee Valley, and I've also been experimenting a little by using the 0.5 micron (green) abrasive sheets from Lee Valley. I haven't tried the 2500 yet. I'm curious if those will make stropping unnecessary.

I just take 3 - 5 strokes on the strop using light pressure.

Jim

[Tom Haney]

thanks all for the advice.

i think im just pushing down too hard on the bevel when stropping.

and also, giving too many passes.

thanks

[Martin Zielinski]

I also go up to 2000 grit sandpaper using the Scary Sharp method. I then strop with LV green compound on a strip of hardboard. I am having a strange experience with this. The tools do feel/behave sharper off the strop, but the surface actually looks more scratched then it looks after final polishing on the 2000 grit sandpaper. Could it be that the grit on the sandpaper breaks down with use and actually polishes to a greater degree then the purported 0.5 micron particles of the compound do? This just keeps on bothering me. Thanks to anyone who could shed some light on this.

[Sandy Stanford]

I also go up to 2000 grit sandpaper using the Scary Sharp method. I then strop with LV green compound on a strip of hardboard. I am having a strange experience with this. The tools do feel/behave sharper off the strop, but the surface actually looks more scratched then it looks after final polishing on the 2000 grit sandpaper. Could it be that the grit on the sandpaper breaks down with use and actually polishes to a greater degree then the purported 0.5 micron particles of the compound do? This just keeps on bothering me. Thanks to anyone who could shed some light on this.

I can assure you that stropping on compound impregnated leather after 2,000 or higher grit sandpaper on glass or other equivalent media will do nothing to improve an edge and is quite unnecessary. There is virtually nothing to be gained. The burr is certainly long gone, the metal highly polished already on face and bezel; there is simply nothing for the strop to accomplish and indeed it accomplishes nothing. Any "noticeable" improvement is the woodworking equivalent of the well-known medical phenomenon of the sugar pill placebo effect.

This is especially so for the users of the wax based crayons since inevitably the product leaves ridges on the leather that at the microscopic level are mountains. This does nothing to improve an edge and if you strop too enthusiastically will degrade the quality of the edge you worked hard to achieve with your Scary Sharp set up or expensive stones.

Strops made sense when the finest media available was a black or translucent Arkansas. A black Ark will leave rag behind that the finer waterstones, ceramics, and paper completely remove.

[Derek Cohen]

I can assure you that stropping on compound impregnated leather after 2,000 or higher grit sandpaper on glass or other equivalent media will do nothing to improve an edge and is quite unnecessary. There is virtually nothing to be gained. The burr is certainly long gone, the metal highly polished already on face and bezel; there is simply nothing for the strop to accomplish and indeed it accomplishes nothing. Any "noticeable" improvement is the woodworking equivalent of the well-known medical phenomenon of the sugar pill placebo effect.

This is especially so for the users of the wax based crayons since inevitably the product leaves ridges on the leather that at the microscopic level are mountains. This does nothing to improve an edge and if you strop too enthusiastically will degrade the quality of the edge you worked hard to achieve with your Scary Sharp set up or expensive stones.

Strops made sense when the finest media available was a black or translucent Arkansas. A black Ark will leave rag behind that the finer waterstones, ceramics, and paper completely remove.

Oh nonsense Charlie.

This is a broken record of yours. Many, many users will confirm that when you add a little mineral oil (I use Johnsons Baby Oil) the green rouge becomes a soft paste and soaks into the leather.

You should see the picture of a strop in Ron Hock's new book (Oh wait, you were quoting this to me on WoodNet, saying that he was the best thing since sliced bread. Have you changed your opinion?). Well, Ron's strop is THICK in green rouge.

As for not improving an edge, well I have posted pictures of it is doing so. I have hard evidence of its effectiveness. What do we have from you?

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Sandy Stanford]

Hooray for Ron.

It's still all in your imagination.

Please, use a little common sense - going from a precision manufactured stone or highly engineered sheet of abrasive to a piece of highly variable animal hide haphazardly slathered with a grit impregnated bar of wax will not improve an edge.

You want to believe it's so.

It isn't so.

Maurice Fraser on the subject:

"The purpose of stropping is not to abrade more metal, but rather to continue bending, flexing, fatiguing, and burnishing off the miniscule metal strands still clinging to the edge of the blade after the burr breaks off. If you sharpen with waterstones and use a "gold" 8000 grit stone as a final step, stropping is not necessary." End quote and the emphasis added is mine.

I would add that it's not necessary after very high grit papers and hybrid ceramics either but in this particular article Maurice acknowledges that his experience with sandpaper on glass is negligible and Shaptons weren't around when the article was written.

If your edges truly are better after stropping that's not a comment about the efficacy and necessity of stropping but more so on your technique and time investment with the steps that came before. In other words, you stopped honing on your finest stone too soon. And I know you own some very fine honing stones, certainly much better a sharpening media than a piece of leather glued to a piece of wood. It's easy to engineer a scenario that makes stropping seem to be more effective than honing on a very fine, high quality stone.

If you own 8,000 grit or better waterstones, fine/ultra fine ceramic stones, Shaptons, 2,000 grit or better sandpaper or other specialty papers stropping is totally and completely unnecessary if you use your fine stones/papers to full effect.

Brent Beach on the subject:

Stropping helps, right?

1. Stropping is a big enough issue that I have a separate page showing the results of my stropping tests. To summarize, all of the stropping compounds that I have tested have larger abrasive particles than the 3M 0.5 micron microfinishing abrasive. On the basis of my testing stropping can only produce worse results.
   How then to account for all the people who claim that stropping helps? If stropping helps, then there is something else they are doing during honing that they should change -- use different abrasives, use a different honing technique. Stropping will only help if you bring an inferior edge to the strop.

[James Scheffler]

If stropping helps, then there is something else they are doing during honing that they should change -- use different abrasives, use a different honing technique. Stropping will only help if you bring an inferior edge to the strop.

If this turns out to be true, I would have to say that it's easier and quicker (as well as adequate for most purposes) to bring an inferior edge to the strop than achieve a perfect edge on a stone or sandpaper. (At least given my decent but imperfect sharpening skills).

Jim

[Sandy Stanford]

If this turns out to be true, I would have to say that it's easier and quicker (as well as adequate for most purposes) to bring an inferior edge to the strop than achieve a perfect edge on a stone or sandpaper. (At least given my decent but imperfect sharpening skills).

Jim

Beach was not issuing a guarantee that a strop improves, always and everywhere, an already inadequate edge.

If what brought an inferior edge to the strop was poor technique then there would be little hope that all of a sudden technique gets better when standing in front of the strop. If you can't hone on a stone, I doubt it gets much better on a strop. I would expect a bad edge to get worse, especially on a charged strop since you're still removing steel. Now you're using bad technique on a medium that flexes and compresses underneath the tool. I'm hard pressed to see that as a helpful combination.