To Strop or Not To Strop

[Joe Beaulieu]

Can you all tell I am sharpening things that have been left alone too long? Many sharpening questions...

I have a couple of means to sharpen. I own a Lap Sharp, which is a fantastic sharpening machine. I use that quite a bit. I also use my Shapton stones as an alternative, particularly if I just need a quick hit. Either way has merit. My question is about what you do to "freshen up" your edge. I bought a strop a while back. I have it loaded up with compound and have run my chisels across it and it sure does seem to freshen the edge. however I am not sure if I am using it correctly. Basically I find the bevel, and then run the blade quickly down the strop, rinse and repeat. Is there anything more to it? Do you do anything to the back of the blade? I can't see how, but I have been shown the light many times. Is stropping a recommended practice? Will I go blind? I am sure, like many things in our world, there will be differences of opinion, but isn't that what the forum is for?

Let me know if you can shed some light oon this. I really qappreciate the help!

Joe

[ken hatch]

Joe,

I expect you will get two major camps with maybe a third in the middle. One side: Ain't no way no stinking strop will touch my iron. It's sure to dub the edge. The other: It's the way they did it in the golden period of woodworking and it's the proper way to finish a iron, besides a stropped iron has a more durable edge than one that hasn't been stropped. The stropping camp will divide into several "my strop is better than your strop", such as only on hard maple with diamond paste or MDF with Herb's Yellowstone and the purist of course only strop on horse butt leather with green stuff. Then you will get the ones in the middle that strop when using oil stones but not water stones. Botton line like everything wood....YMMV. Improperly done stropping can dub the edge but done well it can give you a stronger edge with little or no dubbing.

Sitting by with my popcorn .

ken

[Chuck Hart]

Ken you are absolutely right this will be another one of those posts that will go on for days with every different version of How You Must Do It being posted. Joe try to find one that seems to make sense to you. Stropping can be a good and fast way to refresh a edge. I agree with Ken. Just remember to do what you feel is right. I am making a big batch of popcorn for this one Ken.

[peter Joseph]

Good question. I often go to the strop after my finest stone but am probably just rolling that edge over more than I realize. Seeing my detailed reflection in the steel inducts me into the process though. Its probably best saved for carving tools only I think.

[Archie England]

I strop typically when stopping at 5-6k with my waterstones. What I do like about the strop is it's polishing of the metal on the back, which is far less likely to roll than the bevel. To check if I have rolled an edge, I par some SYP end-grain for results: effortless sheering indicates I'm still sharp, while jagged or stressed end-grain shows not quite sharp enough.

[Mike Cherry]

My experience has taught me to let the work dictate if I need to strop. If I'm working cherry and my chisel slices end grain like butter after 8k, I'm done. Basically, I do as little as I need to get back to work. That sounded lazier than intended, but there it is.

[Jim Koepke]

Joe,

What I do doesn't matter.

If something is working for you consistently the only reason to change is if you feel there might be room for improvement.

Much of what I have learned has been by trying many of the suggestions of others. As long as it isn't too far afield it is easy to correct an experiment. There will likely never be a sharpening thread to end all sharpening threads unless all the forums decide to ban sharpening threads.

Do you do anything to the back of the blade?

Yes. I keep the back flat on the strop and pull.

Chris Pye suggests in one of his carving books to use no more than 10 strokes on either side of a blade when sharpening. My recollection is Paul Sellers recommends in the neighborhood of 30.

My test of an edge is often to shave a bit of arm hair. This is also how I test the effectiveness of stropping. If a blade comes off the stone cutting hair it is judged by how smooth it felt and how much of the hair it removed in its path. Stropping done correctly will usually improve the hair removal experience. Stropping done incorrectly can actually dub, dull or roll the blade to where it doesn't cut.

Others like to take a thin slice of end grain from a soft wood. This will reveal any nicks or other problems with a tool's edge.

jtk

[Frederick Skelly]

I think Ken's crystal ball is right about where this is goin'.

I do strop. But I was unsuccessful using leather - whatever I was doing (wrong) did indeed dub the edge. I switched to MDF with veritas green compound and got good results. I always strop the back, the same way Jim described - by pulling the tool.

(Aside: Someone here recently pointed out that I shouldn't be applying downward pressure at all when using my Veritas Mk-II. I'm in the process of "retraining myself" with that in mind. If a lighter touch works for me, I'll retry honing on leather. Too much downward pressure would explain why I was dubbing the edge.)

Fred

[ian maybury]

Think part of the trouble is that some use stropping to remove relatively large amounts of metal after fairly coarse grit honing, and others very lightly and precisely to just remove any vestigial wire edge or roughness left on an edge very finely honed (actually polished) on e.g. waterstones. Very different processes.

There's also the related fact that recent very fine waterstones can probably polish an edge to a finer finish than did traditional stropping methods.

Then there's the operational considerations - it's arguably a lot more convenient to quickly strop an edge than to get it back into a guide for finish honing. Maybe not more convenient though than a quick hand hone/polish on a stone to restore an edge.

As Jim it's got to be about finding a process that works, but it's easy to end up comparing apples with oranges when discussing the subject (talking to somebody using it very differently, and with different needs, skills and expectations in terms of results), and probably almost as easy to end up mixing drinks between the differing styles of working...

[Tony Shea]

Oh man, to strop or not to strop. It really depends on what grit stone you're stopping at. I sharpen most of my tools up to the 15000 Shapton (Japanese version which is incredibly cheap on Amazon right now) so I skip the strop. But on some of my blades I will strop in between sharpenings to get my edge back. And yes I would recommend stopping the back as well. For chisels and plane irons I use MDF with green compound. But not all my blades get stropped because I use micro bevels and a honing guide (used to be the eclipse guide and is now the LN). I just get such good results with the guide and is extremely quick to set up and sharpen that I have no reason to change the angle of my high speed grinders tool rest to 30 deg and freehand. I grind all my blades at 25-26deg bevel and put a 30-32deg micro on, the exact angle isn't that important. All my blades are basically the exact same except a couple paring chisels that I freehand at the 25deg grind angle. These are the blades that see the strop and I find it does help tune up the edge.

I carve greenwood spoons a lot so have a lot of carving knives, mostly with scandi grinds and these see a leather strop a lot! This is where my strop pays for itself and I wouldn't be without one. I can go forever between sharpening as long as I hit the strop often. And boy are these blades sharp, some of the sharpest in my shop. The key to the leather strop is light pressure. Even then you will get some rounding, which is actually kind of the point of the leather. I set my leather strop right next to me when carving and put it away in a drawer when I'm done. I do not like contaminates on this strop and take very good care of it.

[ken hatch]

The end grain test, the hair test, even the cut a hanging sheet of paper test will give some info as to the sharpness of your iron but, (again as with all things wood.....YMMV) the best test is to feel and look at the edge. It's like the boat builders mantra, "if it looks fair, it is fair". It's the same with iron, if it looks and feels sharp it is sharp. Of course that begs the question: What does sharp look like .

ken