stropping

[Winton Applegate]

Terry,

Any one know what the grit is on the newsprint?

Ha, ha,
Tomatos are one of my tests for kitchen knife sharpness though I prefer a hard fresh bell pepper. The test is will the edge sink into the skin when touched tangentially on the side of the toe/pep under the weight of the knife and hang there.
When that happens while you watch it is kind of scary.
BUT
I woldn't dream of that test for a plane blade it is irrelevant.

Now to the news print :
I beleve the best quality news print comes from the northern side of Mt. Fuji and is layed in the months of november through march any thing before or after that is considered inferior. The best of the Mt Fuji news print has been generally gauged at about 10,000 grit.

Western News print from New York city is quite high quality but was found to not spit nearly as many hairs as the news print from Washington D.C.
but allas the grit was found to not hold up as well as the Japanese versions.

This is all ignoring the ROCKS in the paper that are on the order of 800 grit give or take a whole order of magnitude.

Glad I was able to answer your question. Keep your calls and donations coming.
Tell all your friends and spread the good word.

Isaiah could I have the next caller please ?

[Kees Heiden]

Kees,
The moral of YOUR story is don't get more edge life out of each of your trips to the sharpening paraphernalia just keep doing your one trick.

Actually I don't strop much myself either. I get good edges from an 8000 Naniwa stone, have often looked for other sharpening stuff, but didn't venture there yet. At the moment I am slowy accumulating a small set of oilstones, so I am going to experiment with them. A strop is more or less compulsory then, as far as I understand.

But I don't particularly like the looks of purple heart or cocobolo or bubinga. So that makes my life a lot easier and cheaper.

Did you experiment with stropping when planing these woods with high cutting angles?

[Warren Mickley]

Winton, I have been stropping on bare leather since 1965. I think some of your notions are based on fantasy rather than experience.

[David Weaver]

In the words of Sherlock Holmes, written by Conan Doyle who based his Sherlock Character to a large extent on Dr. Bell who mentored Doyle

Some detectives fail to rise in their field due to a lack of imagination and visualization.

Can you gentlemen at least for a moment consider that there could possibly be a level of edge QUALITY . . . AS SHARP as a leather stropped edge but with qualities beyond a leather stropped edge ? One that resists edge deformation better, that stays sharp longer before it begins to leave chatter marks from dulling due to less dubbing from the sharpening process and so has more time to dub from actually cutting through wood ?

If the edge is stopped properly, then no. But I doubt most people strop an edge properly to improve 0.1 micron iron oxide - you have to have a smooth strop (and beyond just reaching down and touching your belt and saying "oh, that's smooth"), it needs to be clean, and you have to have good touch.

If you're honing a razor, you can improve iron oxide just a little bit - make it sever a hair even easier than it already does, and probably add durability to it (who would know?) - that is so keen it fills my face with weepers. Chris G likes the iron oxide, though.

I would imagine if you, me, or anyone else used 0.3 micron chromium oxide, we'd find that a stropped edge didn't last any longer in wood - you blast off the last little bit of sharpness in the first few strokes. It matters more that an edge doesn't chip. but in the end, that's not easier to deal with. *that* has to stay clean, it gets on you in your fingers, and then stains clothes. Maybe tiny diamonds are a decent answer, I don't know.

And before I leave this purgatory of minutia let me submit for your consideration . . .
how many Japanese wood workers have you seen working in the traditional ways who strop?.

Well, they do strop their razors (both generations of iwasakis suggested it, linen and strop). There's a happy range of metals for a strop - somewhere between 57 hardness and low 60s. When you get into edges like 65 hardness, and especially in the plainest carbon steels, they don't seem to respond that much to a strop, I don't know why and never examined why - too hard to allow deformation in the right minute amount is my guess. At that hardness, though, they still respond a little when you're maintaining a low wear ultra keen edge like a razor.

I don't think this is an issue of "knowing better" now. Lapidary powders and pigments have been available for centuries.

AS far as my planing of cocobolo goes - you're right - it's a small block. I had glinty cocobolo (the kind that winks back at you) one time in a turning blank that literally dulled an a2 iron trying to remove 1/8th inch thickness from an already coped tote. That's what drove me over the edge to HSS. HSS lasts a bit longer in regular wood, but when the wood gets glinty, the gap widens enormously.

I'd plane a long table top with the stock stanley, same principle - thicker shavings until thin are needed. I didn't really get that back when I bought all of the HSS - I just wanted to be able to creep up on square and final thickness/width very slowly, and that's exactly what I did.

I'll give you the smoother if it doesn't turn out well! I have two blocks to make it - progress is ensured to be very slow for two reasons - I have too much other stuff to do, and it's hard to get any time in the shop at all lately, and 2 - I don't need the plane. I'm hoping that something about the density makes it nicer to me than a beech coffin smoother.

You are right, it's easier to grasp all of this stuff once you've tried everything. If I'd have come to vintage plane with novaculite finishers first, I'd still have tried all of the rest. My first stones were an 800/1200/6000 king set. They worked well enough, but I replaced them anyway. We (most of us at least) have to screw around to satisfy our curiosity, because in the end, this is about screwing around for most of us.

[David Weaver]

One other side comment - the things I thought when I thought them earlier on aren't what I thought, and the things I think now when I plane cocobolo are different

You know it's coming....wait for it....

..the double iron in a stanley plane makes all the difference planing cocobolo. It planes easily when it's properly set. All of the notions about the iron being too thin or not lasting long enough, etc, have a lot to do with not having the plane set up correctly. If you let the wood tear out on you, it will present all kinds of shortcomings ("oh, the plane must be dull. oh, the iron is too thin. Oh, the iron's not hard enough to handle this wood"). But if the double iron is set up properly, even on a thick shaving the tearing is very minimal and the planing pleasant.

I wasn't ready to hear that 6 or 7 years ago or whatever it was when I got all of the other stuff. Just like I'm not smart enough to avoid making a plane right now that I'll just set aside in favor of a plain stanley #4. I do have that cocobolo blank, and it cost me 90 bucks and I waited for it to dry. I'm certainly not going to let it die a humiliating death, such as being turned into a bowl or made into pen blanks.

But like kees - my eyes don't find much favor for it (cocobolo) anymore. It's just something interesting to try because I *know* I don't like the weight of the beech plane and bump starting them.

[Pat Barry]

All this talk about stropping got me wondering, what is the proper angle to hold the tool being stropped? Do you try to match the grind angle, match the secondary bevel angle, raise the tool more perpendicular than the grind angle? Do you strop only in one direction or back and forth? How much pressure should be applied?

I can't believe the number of questions. I would love to watch an instructional video on this topic.

PS .I never thought there would be so much discussion about stropping.

[paul cottingham]

All this talk about stropping got me wondering, what is the proper angle to hold the tool being stropped? Do you try to match the grind angle, match the secondary bevel angle, raise the tool more perpendicular than the grind angle? Do you strop only in one direction or back and forth? How much pressure should be applied?

I can't believe the number of questions. I would love to watch an instructional video on this topic.

PS .I never thought there would be so much discussion about stropping.

I was going to ask this myself, but was afraid I would find out I have been doing it all wrong.... :-)

[David Weaver]

strop close to the angle of the edge. Leather doesn't abrade much but it has a very very mild capability to do it.

Pressure is dependent on how fine the edge is. On a fine edge, pressure does not have to be much. best results come from stropping both sides of a tool. A few strokes on the bevel, one with the tool flat..repeat two or three times.

if an edge has to be stropped hard, it probably wasn't ready to come to the strop. If it leaves lines on the strop after the first pull or two, it wasn't ready to come to the strop.

On a razor, these things become very critical, but razor stropping is also reflexive once you do it for a couple of weeks. A rolled edge, for example, from inexperience, means a razor that will be too dull to be comfortably shaved with. Not such a big deal on a tool.

Properly stropped, though, a tool edge will shave hair pretty easily from either side. An edge in need of stropping may only shave hair easily on one side. You can see how much influence the strop has on a hardened steel edge by deliberately applying stiff pressure on the bevel side, and then checking how the strop will shave on either side, and then do the other side, check again. Follow that by lighter pressure even strokes back and bevel (so that you're not deliberately bending the edge) and then check again.

It's easier to do it than talk about it - it should take about 10-15 seconds.

[David Weaver]

I was going to ask this myself, but was afraid I would find out I have been doing it all wrong.... :-)

If it works, it's right!

[Doug Bowman]

Admittedly I am a stropping newb - but I find the strop to be very easy to freehand on. When you have the angle correct on the bevel there is very little resistance to drawiing the blade across the strop. Too low or too high and it feels very different. and of course the back is easy.

[Brian Holcombe]

Forgive my ignorance; why would one chose to strop over doing a 1/2 stroke on a fine grit stone to take off the burr?

[David Weaver]

How fine of a grit are you thinking?

the strop does very little to the edge other than pull off a wire edge and do a very light amount of work to the edge. A stone is certainly OK to use (owyhee/biggs jasper is great as a wire edge chaser that needs no care other than to be kept clean).

Otherwise, it's somewhat of a 6 of one or half dozen of another if the finest stone you use already does what you need, except the strop needs very little attention.

[Brian Holcombe]

That's my understanding as well, which i suppose is why I've never really looked into the strop much beyond the surface level.

I finish with a 6000 whetstone.

[David Weaver]

It will improve an edge off of a 6000 grit waterstone, but so too would a $10 piece of jasper.

Generally, the fatter and wider the grooves (like from novaculite) the better the response from a strop. There are probably times where you feel like you get an impossibly sharp edge from a 6k stone, because the wire edge has seprated by chance and left a clean edge, and maybe other times where it feels more standard. When you use a strop, they're all the same.

But japanese stones step up a little less in sharpness because of the deeper narrower grooves.

Jasper is nice because it just *barely*, cuts, but it doesn't leave much of a wire edge when it does either, and other than keeping the dust off of it, it requires practically no care. And a 6x4 jasper slab is about...well, ten bucks.

[Brian Holcombe]

Thanks for your insight as always. I have experienced that with this stone and I've found it difficult to have a perfectly repeatable result, but often I'm usually satisfied with the edge. I'll have to work a strop into the routine.