Strops

[George Symula]

I have a couple of questions for those of you who use leather strops as a sharpening tool.
1. What thickness or weight do you find the best?
2. Is horsebutt that much better than other leathers?
3. What substrate do you use and what glue do you use?
Thanks....George

[jim goddard]

1. Whatever I have around at the time. The last ones I made came from an old pair of boots which Im pretty sure was cowhide.
2. Dont know but my cowhide version makes a good edge pretty quick.
3. solid wood and whatever sort of glue is handy.

[Dale Coons]

Made mine with cowhide on mdf--stuck with contact cement. they're several years old now and still work fine.

[David Keller NC]

I have a couple of questions for those of you who use leather strops as a sharpening tool.
1. What thickness or weight do you find the best?
2. Is horsebutt that much better than other leathers?
3. What substrate do you use and what glue do you use?
Thanks....George

George - My take on this (I use a strop for all edge maintenance until the edges get chipped or nicked and require re-grinding and/or re-honing on waterstones):

1: Thinner is better, because the leather has less "give" when glued to a flat substrate, and is less likely to round the cutting edge if too much pressure is applied during stropping. Having said that, it's a minor factor. My current one is somewhere between 1/8" and 1/4" thick oil-tanned cowhide leather. My last one was 1/32nd - 1/16" oil-tanned deer hide. I don't notice any performance differences.

2: Not really. It doesn't really make any difference what you use, so long as it will reasonably hold the stropping compound. In fact, many folks successfully use stropping compound spread directly onto MDF or a flat maple or other hardwood board (without the leather). I'm old school; I prefer leather.

3: Any substrate that's flat and appeals to your aesthetic sensibilities. I make my strops out of mahogany scraps; others use MDF, plywood, maple, or just about anything else that's reasonably hard. The glue doesn't matter - anything that will both stick to leather and wood will work. That includes hot hide glue, liquid hide glue, yellow carpenter's glue, epoxy, urea formaldehyde glues, etc..., etc...

[Zahid Naqvi]

A lot of folks don't use leather at all, just scribble a bunch of criss cross lines on MDF or flattened solid wood and use that as strop. After all the only purpose leather serves is to hold the honing compound.

[David Weaver]

8/9 oz vegetable tanned leather is what I use (that is about 1/8th thick), and it can be bought fairly cheaply by the square foot on ebay. I keep a few square feet of it around to make strops, and to make leather discs for a disc sander (that is a very handy, but somewhat dangerous, stropping machine).

I have not used horse butt, but a fairly large group of "knowing" folks on WC called it better because it's harder and it has more pull on the edge - maybe more silica? (you'll know what I mean when you strop on something hard). I'm sure they're right, but it's out of my price range for my level of carelessness - meaning that if I accidentally get metal filings in a strop with $2 of vege tanned leather on it, it's not a huge deal, I can just go make another one.

I glue an offcut of wood to one of the large pieces of scrap leather to make a paddle strop, and just cut the paddle free from the scrap with a plane blade once the glue dries. Glued with hide glue (anything that holds the leather to the wood without making hard lumps under the strop is fine).

I only generally use the strop to move and manipulate the edge since my finish stone is a 1 micron stone and is almost a strop. I think most people who don't strop would be shocked how much an edge on even very hard tool steel moves, not just gets adhered or abraded off, but is moved/bent by the leather. If you can move and manipulate the edge, you can use a coarser stone, like a 4k/5k stone or a black oilstone and get the edge to behave like it was done on a much finer stone.

A very very fine stone will shave hair very easily on both sides of the bevel (i.e., you can sharpen a plane iron and then shave easily with it bevel up or bevel down). With a strop, you can manipulate the edge so one side of the iron or chisel will behave like either side of a more finely honed iron (obviously, you manipulate the edge so that for example, if you're using a BD iron, you intentionally get that sharpeness with the iron oriented the way it will be seated in the plane).

[David Weaver]

A lot of folks don't use leather at all, just scribble a bunch of criss cross lines on MDF or flattened solid wood and use that as strop. After all the only purpose leather serves is to hold the honing compound.

This works extremely well, too, if you have a stone that doesn't cut very tough steels well, but don't want to spend $100 on one that does. All of the commonly used tool steels are sharpened to a very sharp edge by the green stuff (chromium oxide). On steels with big carbides, there is a very significant difference in sharpness with MDF and green junk vs. stopping with a shapton 15k, and it can just be used like a stone.

[Gary Hodgin]

I have a few strops and slips made from leather I got it from Woodcraft, but I've seen it at some other places. I'm sure a strop could be made from various other leather. I suspect some are better than others but for $15 I decided to just go with the woodcraft stuff.

I made an 8" x 2" paddle strop made from leather I got at Woodcraft. I made the paddle (same shape as those sold at Woodcraft) and attached it to a 3/4" poplar substrate with rubber cement. The leather has green compound on it and is smooth side up. I like the smooth side up but some use the round side and some make double-sided paddles. I plan to make a larger one (about 12" x 3") for a razor. It will be one-sided, smooth side up with no compound. I used neetsfoot oil to condition them. I'm sure other stuff (mineral oil, honing oil) would work too.

I also have a strop made with compound on balsa. It's a thin (about 3/8") piece of balsa about 10"x 3" with green compound (chromium oxide) on one side and red compound (iron oxide) on the other. I bought this from Larry at whippeddog. com, but it would be very easy to make. I got it as a package with some other stuff. This is a cheap but effective way to strop.



With any stropping you have to worry about rounding over the edge, but with a firm substrate the chances are reduced. Rounding over is one reason why I prefer the smooth side of a leather strop over the rough side. Some use the fine diamond compounds on wooden and leather strops.

http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/200...ip-Makers.aspx

[john brenton]

Plus 1 for the balsa paddle strop. I made mine originally for travelling with a straight razor, but then went with a disposable blade straight. They sell good sized balsa strips at Michaels and Hobby Lobby.

[Jim Koepke]

1. What thickness or weight do you find the best?
2. Is horsebutt that much better than other leathers?
3. What substrate do you use and what glue do you use?

1. Whatever works. I have some very thick, hard pieces for plane blades and chisels.
I also have some thin pieces that can be manipulated to strop gouges.

2. This is something for others to answer. I do not know if any of my leather is horse butt or not.

3. None of my strops are mounted. Often they are just set on my band saw table for use or on the edge of the bench.

In the past, I was not much for stropping. Since buying a "green stick" at a lapidary shop, I have been converted.

jtk

[john brenton]

Horse hide may be better for straight razor shaving, but it would be overkill for tools...

[George Symula]

Thanks for the responses. I've been a waterstone (king) guy and for the last few years scary sharp guy. About a week ago I picked up a cast iron table saw top at the reclamation center (dump) in good condition. After all of the fuss about diamond sharpening I decided to give it a go, so I've cleaned up the top, ordered some diamond in three grits and since I've comitted to try cast iron, i figured I might as well go all in and make a couple of strops. A quick stop at Tandy got me 2 chunks of leather out of the scrap bin, ($4) 1 piece tanned and about !/8"-3/16 and the other very hard and about 1/32". I guess if there's no real preference I'll go with titebond 3 and unibond 800.
Dennis, what do you mean by, "moving" the iron around?

George

[Zahid Naqvi]

I made a leather strop from some rough leather, glued it on a board but I always get my edges rounded on it, despite putting on a very liberal coat of white honing compound. So I switched to a pine board with some lines scribbled on it, and it seems to be so much better. I must be doing something wrong with the leather strop I guess

[john brenton]

Probably pressing too hard. When you strop straight razors, it's a necessity to put as little pressure as possible on the razor...basically letting the weight of the little razor be the only pressure. Of course there is some play in there, and you can put a little pressure on, but you don't need to. Same thing with the tools. If a light stropping isn't enough to get the edge where it needs to be, then it's time to soak the stones.

Anything beyond 8k is not really necessary (some argue that 8k is overkill), and using white or green rouge after honing to 8k is no good.

I made a leather strop from some rough leather, glued it on a board but I always get my edges rounded on it, despite putting on a very liberal coat of white honing compound. So I switched to a pine board with some lines scribbled on it, and it seems to be so much better. I must be doing something wrong with the leather strop I guess

[Jay Maiers]

What is a good size for stropping plane blades?