Stropping Advice..

[leon-b]

Found a strop which a member off here kindly sent me ages ago!

I've glued It to a piece of board and when the glue tried I'm going to give Stropping a go for the first time on my Clipper. It's fairly sharp, can slice paper but I want to get It razor sharp and the Clipper seems easy to sharpen so thought I'd give It a try.

I haven't got any stropping compound but have heard Toothpaste and T cut work ok?

Butch

 

[copper_head]

what sort of strop do you have? if its just a piece of leather you dont really need any compound, just 20 strokes 'up' and then 20 'down' repeat until ya got the burr nice and even

 

[leon-b]

It's just a piece of Leather glued smooth side down to a piece of board. The rough side came with some kind of compound but It's been In the garage for so long It's worn off..

Butch

 

[copper_head]

well your quite right about toothpaste as an abrasive, it will work. You could try valve grinding paste aswel. Personally i always strop with nothing but the leather, by the point your stropping it should just be setting the burr straight to achieve a fine edge (sorry if this is gospel to you already) the courseness of the leather alone (i use an old belt) should be enough to achieve this...

 

[leon-b]

Okay, will give It a go how It Is and then see how It goes!
Is there an easy way of removing the old Compound off the Leather?

Butch

 

[copper_head]

well you might have a job of removing any in-grained compound from the leather, you could try scraping it out i guess, but a hell of a job i reckon. dont spose it will hurt to have the stuff on there, good luck butch!

 

[leon-b]

Cheers bud, just need to glue something grippy on the bottom so It doesn't run away from me..

Butch

 

[Tjurved]

well your quite right about toothpaste as an abrasive, it will work. You could try valve grinding paste aswel. Personally i always strop with nothing but the leather, by the point your stropping it should just be setting the burr straight to achieve a fine edge (sorry if this is gospel to you already) the courseness of the leather alone (i use an old belt) should be enough to achieve this...

I also stropp for polishing the blade to a mirror finish.

 

[big_swede]

Found a strop which a member off here kindly sent me ages ago!

I've glued It to a piece of board and when the glue tried I'm going to give Stropping a go for the first time on my Clipper. It's fairly sharp, can slice paper but I want to get It razor sharp and the Clipper seems easy to sharpen so thought I'd give It a try.

I haven't got any stropping compound but have heard Toothpaste and T cut work ok?

Butch

Nice to see you are alive leon. I wondered what ever happened to you and where you went. My guess was puberty and the sudden realising that the opposite sex is pretty sweet...

 

[leon-b]

Haha! I know It's been ages since I've been on here but met some good people on here so thought I'd come back and see how everybody's doing!
Butch

 

[sgw1]

While I have more experience of sharpening woodcarving gouges than knives I thought the following might be of interest.

There appears to be some confusion about the purpose of a polished finish on an already sharp edge. From my experience, the polishing does not directly influence the effective sharpness of the edge. When woodcarving I use a high polished (jewellers rouge on strop) edge when making final cuts which will be highly visible on the finished surface. Even a very well finished sharp edge will have marks left from the abrasive. Although behind the cutting edge, these marks will make contact with the already cut surface. Especially on fine cuts. The courser the grinding marks are, the more the finished surface will be scratched.

On most work, especially bushcrafting, this either won't matter or can be wiped away with a couple of strokes with fine paper. However on high class carving where a cut rather than a sanded surface is demanded, I would polish the bevels of my gouges.

I have often seen people spoiling an already well made edge by rounding it over with over enthusiastic stropping to achieve a polished bevel.