Stropping [with compound] can be detrimental...

[bushtuckerman]

...apparently:

http://www.cutleryscience.com/forum/read.php?5,56,56

Would be interesting to see what stropping advocates have to say on this.

 

[HillBill]

Interesting.

I strop with a belt and no abrasives but i mainly use convex blades, it helps a lot. In his test he is using a plane blade, which i presume only has a bevel on one side, i'm not sure that stropping would be the best thing to do with a blade like that anyway.
Does it not need a solid surface to keep that sort of edge true? On my mora i use a waterstone with a couple of light strokes down a steel to finish as it seems to have more bite that way than a strop, even with the steel afterwards.

I stand to be corrected though as i'm no expert. I've never used abrasives either.

 

[Shewie]

Interesting find Ian, I`ve never used any compounds so let`s see what others have to say.

 

[singteck]

I wonder how long he spent sharpening with his 3M. For me, just 2-3 pass on my coarse diamond plate and 2-3 pass on the strop and it's shaving sharp for carbon steel.


singteck

 

[Tadpole]

I can’t see the article as it is blocked at work, but I agree that always stropping with compound, can be detrimental in some cases, sometimes you need a slightly courser edge to a blade, when say cutting rope, or hacking through timber, other times you need a stropped/polished edge, when cutting leather or finely finishing wood. You’d not strop and polish a edge on your splitting maul, but neither would you sharpen your mora with a course axe puck
There isn’t a hard and fast rule for what kind of edge you must have for every blade or sharp. Some cut better with a highly polished edge and some are better with the micro serrations associated with a course sharpening stone.
Each tool and each use to which the tool is used needs a different treatment
JMHO

 

[weaver]

He is sharpening with 3-M abrasive sheet at .5 micron, that alone is very much higher polish than anyone here except maybe British Red would ever sharpen. I think I recall a statement from him recently saying that he has given up sharpening above 600 grit, a far cry from .5 micron.

He then strops with a compound that has particles larger than .5 micron. To quote my teen son...

"well, duh!"

What does he think will happen?

I dare say not many people here will be cutting sewing threads thousands of times to see if their knife is sharp.

 

[gregorach]

Beach argues finally that those promoting stropping are most likely just seeing the effect of stropping on edges which have not been optimally sharpened using high quality abrasives. It is often the case that the give of the soft backing media, leather or paper, also compensates for the low angle control that is a problem with non-jig sharpening.

Seems reasonable enough. How many of us sharpen on a jig with "high quality abrasives"? (By "high quality abrasives", he means better than an 8000 grit Japanese waterstone.)

 

[robin wood]

Glad I read through the other posts before ranting myself. This level of sharpening is not really relevant to the average bushcraft knife. Stropping with compound certainly can be a useful part of a sharpening system, there are many different ways of getting blades sharp, one is not necessarily better or worse than any other, the questions I would ask are what do you want to cut? How long do you spend cutting and how much time do you want to spend sharpening? If creating the perfect tooled finish is vital then hours spent finishing on 10.000 grit waterstones will do the job. One thing they don't mention is autosol abrasive paste costs £3 from Halfords, a good 10,000 grit waterstone costs £50 and I had a look for 0.5 micron 3M sheets but could not find them. So to my mind autosol is still the cheapest way of getting a fine polish on an edge tool for many people.

 

[Hoodoo]

He is sharpening with 3-M abrasive sheet at .5 micron, that alone is very much higher polish than anyone here except maybe British Red would ever sharpen. I think I recall a statement from him recently saying that he has given up sharpening above 600 grit, a far cry from .5 micron.

He then strops with a compound that has particles larger than .5 micron. To quote my teen son...

"well, duh!"

What does he think will happen?

I dare say not many people here will be cutting sewing threads thousands of times to see if their knife is sharp.

Totally agree with you there. "Stropping" is a straw man in this. If the issue is are there finer and more uniform abrasives out there than stropping compound, well then duh!

 

[John Fenna]

Whats a micron?
All I know is that after stropping my knife cuts cleaner and better than before......
Science? - I spit near it (I am too much rule of thumb to hit it exactly every time...)

 

[Kerne]

I never use an abrasive compound when I strop (knives) and when I sharpen a plane blade I tend to finish it off with a few stroke on the sleeve of my workshop coat. No abrasive compound but the accumulated gunk of years!

 

[Eric_Methven]

Hmmm... Compounds can be useful for certain jobs and to achieve certain effects, but stropping and honing are different things in my book. I use finer grits finishing of with compound on either a buffing wheel or leather if I do a complete regrind on an edge, but thereafter I hone the edge on leather. Both are handy in the right context but compound is not the be all and end all of keeping an edge.

Eric

 

[Toddy]

I thought stropping only removed that fine 'wire' at the end
I hone, on a leather covered flat stick about 50mm wide, and I use compound on it. I have sharpening stones, DC4, diamond files and the rest, but since I started honing the knives I've never needed to use anything else, and that applies to scandi ground as well as convex.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[bushtuckerman]

A nice cross-section of feedback, thanks.

John, I share your sentiment, but the reason it caught my eye is that I intend to make a strop and I have wondered several things, including whether or not I'll use compound and whether or not to make a stiff boarded-strop. I read a woodcarver's most-likely genuine claim that (just for woodcraft one would presume) all that is needed to maintain an edge is a boarded-strop with a thin piece of leather so that no rounding occurs.

I have only recently heard of Autosol. Is it for polishing paintjobs or somesuch? Is it any different from those crayon-like compounds?


Eric, recently I have read article upon article of sharpening advice and it seems to me that everyone has different terminology on this subject. One person says you Grind,Sharpen then Hone, while the next says you Sharpen,Hone and Polish, etc. Some say stropping does this and others that. I am also interested in the fact that you can maintain your knife with plain leather, would this knife be a heavy duty bushcraft knife or just a woodcarver?

The most interesting article I have read so far is one linked to by Ragnar:
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=26036

 

[bushtuckerman]

At least someone has confidence in clearing this up:

'Do I need to “hone” my tools after I sharpen them?
No Timmy, you are comparing apples and oranges.
A hone is the stone or surface you sharpen on.'

oddly amusing: http://www.littleshavers.com/Sharpening.html

 

[Toddy]

Sounds like Rick is a silly man.
Hone is both a transitive verb as well a noun.
e.g.
http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/hone.html

cheers,
Toddy

 

[weaver]

A micron is one millionth of a meter. About 60,000 grit!

Here's a good explanation by people who are serious about polishing...

http://www.faceters.com/askjeff/answer67.shtml

 

[bushtuckerman]

Sounds like Rick is a silly man.
Hone is both a transitive verb as well a noun.
e.g.
http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/hone.html

He is definitely a silly man. However, I think he meant that sharpening and honing are the same thing in his book, because it would make no sense to compare an action and an object as apples and oranges.


Weaver, not according to this: http://users.ameritech.net/knives/grits.htm
Grit comparisons don't appear to be the same internationally or even nationally. I am confused.
edit: thanks for the link, from a closer look I've realised that it's something I've been looking for.