Basic Stropping Question

[Patrick Chase]

Strop for carving tools, knives, and straight razors - either Warren's clean strop for stuff coming off a hard black arkansas or the Tormek stuff in a tube on the power strop for carving tools. Never on chisel or plane blades, where my preference is for the edge I get off the stone. I religiously stropped for decades before bagging it after moving from oil stones to diamond/waterstones back in the 1990's.

The Tormek stuff is really good. It's 0.5 um Al-Oxide IIRC, and appears to be very tightly graded, yielding results similar to what I get from tightly-spec'ed 0.5 um diamond pastes. I also have some 0.5 um Al-Oxide powder that I bought from an optics house a while back, and that works nicely.

As has been pointed out many times, the green stuff isn't actually 0.5 um as claimed, but IMO it's sufficient (for some definition thereof :-) for woodworking. I believe that George uses it, for example. I wouldn't use it after any stone finer than about 1.2 um (8000# on JIS scale) though, as it only makes the edge more jagged in my experience.

[steven c newman]

Maybe a study on the "grits" of blue jeans/Denim? I refresh an edge by stropping on the leg of my jeans.....then back to work.....and no "Green stuff" applied...

[Patrick Chase]

Maybe a study on the "grits" of blue jeans/Denim? I refresh an edge by stropping on the leg of my jeans.....then back to work.....and no "Green stuff" applied...

For improvised strops nothing beats your palm :-)

[Frederick Skelly]

For improvised strops nothing beats your palm :-)

Hayward recommends that as a good way to get rid of the burr. Then he goes to the stone again for 2-3 strokes and finally the strop.

[Stanley Covington]

I use sharpening stone mud as a compound for stropping carving tools. Put it on the leather wet, and rub it in. Let it dry and away we go.

Sharpening stone mud is finer than any compound I can buy commercially, high quality, good consistency, and I have already paid for it, so reusing it makes sense.

I also finish up my plane blades by stropping them on the heel of my hand after dabbing my hand in sharpening stone mud.

Stan

[Patrick Chase]

I use sharpening stone mud as a compound for stropping carving tools. Put it on the leather wet, and rub it in. Let it dry and away we go.

Sharpening stone mud is finer than any compound I can buy commercially, high quality, good consistency, and I have already paid for it, so reusing it makes sense.

I also finish up my plane blades by stropping them on the heel of my hand after dabbing my hand in sharpening stone mud.

Stan

I agree that sharpening stone mud is a great stropping material, but I think that "finer than any compound I can buy commercially" is improbable unless you happen to be trapped on a desert island with nothing but a JNat and an Internet connection (for SMC of course).

The finest compound I personally have is a 0.1 um diamond paste, which is the equivalent of 120000# or so. The straight razor nuts have been known to strop with 0.025 um diamond and CBN sprays, and 0.03 um Al-Oxide is cheaply and widely available for use in polishing compounds. IIRC the quartz (SiO2) particles in JNats are more coarse than that even after being broken down.

Real mirror- and lens-makers (as opposed to people who just want to "mirror polish" their plane iron) work with far finer compounds than anything we use or need for woodworking, hence the availability of the above-referenced wonders of modern abrasive technology.

[Stanley Covington]

I agree that sharpening stone mud is a great stropping material, but I think that "finer than any compound I can buy commercially" is improbable unless you happen to be trapped on a desert island with nothing but a JNat and an Internet connection (for SMC of course).

The finest compound I personally have is a 0.1 um diamond paste, which is the equivalent of 120000# or so. The straight razor nuts have been known to strop with 0.025 um diamond and CBN sprays, and 0.03 um Al-Oxide is cheaply and widely available for use in polishing compounds. IIRC the quartz (SiO2) particles in JNats are more coarse than that even after being broken down.

Real mirror- and lens-makers (as opposed to people who just want to "mirror polish" their plane iron) work with far finer compounds than anything we use or need for woodworking, hence the availability of the above-referenced wonders of modern abrasive technology.

Touche, Patrick. But you're picking flyspecks from pepper.

I should have written "finer than any compound I can buy conveniently." Of course, if I go to a specialist abrasives store, I can get a smaller grit product. But I don't have an account with an abrasives company, they typically don't do retail sales, or sell in small quantities, and even if they did, I would spend an hour on a train/subway/mare's shank to get the retailer's place of business. A lot of work to buy a minute amount of compound every 5 years to replace something I have on hand and that costs me no additional time or money.

I regret many things in my life. One such thing was imagining a word coming from a politician's mouth might not be a lie.

Another regret is that I got carried away and spent a lot of money on compounds, diamond pastes, and all the plates, backers, loupes, microscope, lights, reflectors and other accouterments that polishing at sub-micron levels require. It kept me awake at night. It took 2 years to lift my eyes to the sky and see the light

It was all wasted time and money. I finally realized that it made no sense to try to sharpen or polish anything with a stone/compound much finer than the dust in the air where I was sharpening/polishing. I had been told this exact thing by a professional sword sharpener/polisher when I was a young man, but foolishly ignored his sound insight.

Of course, it doesn't make sense to use a polishing medium for hand stropping finer than the last stone used.

[michael langman]

I don't use leather when stropping with the green aluminum oxide .
A piece of 1x6 pine, charged with the green compound does the job fine for me.

[Mike Baker 2]

The straight razor nuts have been known to strop with 0.025 um diamond and CBN sprays, and 0.03 um Al-Oxide is cheaply and widely available for use in polishing compounds. IIRC the quartz (SiO2) particles in JNats are more coarse than that even after being broken down.

This straight razor nut uses clean leather most of the time, although I have used crox pasted strops to touch up, or after coming off of something like a coticule.
But in all honesty, I have been known to finish on .3 um lapping film.
And yes, some of us are plumb nuts!

[Mike Baker 2]

To answer the OP from my perspective...
You will see from this thread that a lot of stropping, like everything else, is personal preference.
On a straight, I have found the rough side of the leather to undo all the work I've done refining the edge for a smooth shave. But that also depends on the leather, how it was treated in the tanning process, what the initial quality was, etc. Some of it is smoother on the rough side than others, so there's that.
On my chisels and plane blades I haven't noticed a difference.Both work just fine. But there is a difference in feel, and I greatly prefer the feel of stropping on smooth rather than rough leather. MHO.

[steven c newman]

Have used an old, leather Work belt for years.....last used to support the nail bags for my tool belt, until about 2003. All worn down, so much so, that I can't really tell which WAS the rough side. Been using the "Green Stick" to charge the thing up. Not polishing a mirror, just trying to keep an edge sharp. Really do not care IF I can see myself......be ugly enough to crack the steel, anyway...

As above, when working with the chisels, like chopping mortises, or dovetails.....a few quick swipes on the leg of my blue jeans, and back to work...

[Ted Phillips]

I have several strops around the shop - shaped for different tools and edges. My core strop for plane blades and chisels is a piece of quarter inch thick cow hide about 10"x4" glued to a piece of masonite - smooth side up. I charge the leather every few months with a green CrOx stick. I use very light pressure because it is possible to round over the edge - it has happened to me more than once... For me, this approach polishes the edge and knocks off any remaining burr and is my last step before getting back to woodworking.

That's my $0.02.

[David Ragan]

My observation is the same, for woodturning tools in my case. For example, I use a 1200 grit CBN wheel on the Tormek to grind/sharpen my spindle gouges then hone/polish on the leather wheel then strop for a few seconds. The subjective result is a longer-lasting edge. I recently got an Edge On Up SharpCheck sharpness tester to try to put some numbers on this. I need to devise a reasonable test procedure for the lathe. It would be easier for a plane.

JKJ

John, I looked @ this machine on Amazon...do you prefer it over, or in addition to a micro/macroscope?

It works on how much force to divide the thread?

After stumbling across Brent Beach's site on sharpening, I thought, 'dang, all this stropping business is a waste of time'. This was particularly disheartening because I had just got some really nice leather from Tandy for strops, and some Diamond paste. Total bummer.

Sharpening threads are great to read. So much diversity.

How do you all reconcile the information on Brent's site w our usual practice of stropping. (I really, really want to believe in stropping )

I guess this is one of those YMMV, right?

Thanks

[Jim Koepke]

I guess this is one of those YMMV, right?

Yes it is!

jtk

[John K Jordan]

John, I looked @ this machine on Amazon...do you prefer it over, or in addition to a micro/macroscope?
It works on how much force to divide the thread?
After stumbling across Brent Beach's site on sharpening, I thought, 'dang, all this stropping business is a waste of time'. This was particularly disheartening because I had just got some really nice leather from Tandy for strops, and some Diamond paste. Total bummer.
Sharpening threads are great to read. So much diversity.
How do you all reconcile the information on Brent's site w our usual practice of stropping. (I really, really want to believe in stropping )
I guess this is one of those YMMV, right?
Thanks

Oops, wrote this hours ago and went out to move the horses and forgot to click send:

Yes, it measures the force to sever a "calibrated" thread. (There are very expensive machines that work on the same principle.) All use a single-edged razor blade to check and the EdgeOnUp people found that all of them will sever the threads within a gram or two. It's a tricky thing for repeatability since on the micro level even an incredibly sharp edge has lots of irregularities. If the blade slides a bit a "sawing" action can bias the test.

I found this interesting: https://scienceofsharp.wordpress.com/

I also think the application and method of using the edge makes a huge difference in how well a specific sharpening technique works. I use an entirely different method for my lathe tools, my chip carving knives, my carving tools, and my pocket knife - all appropriate for their use.

The microscope is fun but doesn't tell the whole story. For woodturning, btw, even deep serrations don't affect the cut although polishing the edge may, subjectively at least, make the edge last longer and at minimum can leave a smoother surface on hard wood. Woodturning is a special case, I think, since the tools are nearly always subjected to strong forces and very high speeds, not easily comparable to a plane or even a dovetail chisel in use.

I took my sharpness tester to a woodturner friend recently who is comparing methods of sharpening lathe skew chisels. He and an associate has gotten subjective impressions of the differences but we are hoping the test will put some numbers on the tests. He is also having scanning electron microscope images done of all the edges. The SEM photos are far better than the optical light photos because the specular reflections can make comparisons extremely difficult. I'm anxious to hear what he comes up with.

I haven't read Brent Beach information.

JKJ