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- Apr 3, 2013
- Messages
- 1,105
If your like me you get sick of paying for expense leather to strop with on a guided system and it's easier to cut a strop on a guided system then it is free hand stropping,a while back Beansandcarrots on this forum posted a thread about using MDF and cheap Badak Diamond Paste from ebay and it got me to thinking if you can MDF to strop free hand why not use it on a guided system to strop with.
Here are the result's I got using MDF strop's I made up and mounted to blanks 4 8 and 10K Badak diamond paste I there is a 3K in the picture that's just a mistake on my part,I found that the Badak diamond paste cut alright but was not as fast as the next paste I used witch I will talk about next,I also have made up some strop's out 1/4 MDF the ones in the picture are 3/4 either will work fine but I decided to switch because I have some 2x8 bag's I use to store my leather strop's in and these would not come out of the bag very easy and I do not want to tear the bag's all the time.
From what I can tell the black stuff is metal that the diamond paste removed as the paste's are pink and other color's.
I next tried Poltava Diamond Tool's .5 1 and 3K CBN paste and their .1 diamond paste,when applied to the MDF strop there is a light grey color to the strop and that's about it and the more you strop the more dark the MDF get's with swarf,I also found the Poltava product to much faster then the Badak diamond paste and I think the Poltava stuff is what I going to stick with from now on.
The nice thing about using the MDF is that you can much faster if you want to,I used my Tsprof K02 and I did not use sweeping strokes when I stropped I just pulled the strop back and forth full length in the same spot on the edge and worked my way down the blade and you can also use a surprising amount of pressure and the MDF does not get cut into either using a back and forth stroke method,I'm not saying you should use a ton of pressure when stropping I was playing around to see what would happen.
Here is a picture of my Spyderco Valloton I just picked up for cheap off of a seller on ebay,I also was not going for a perfect mirror polished edge just a really good sharp polished edge,I also sharpened and stropped a Manix 2 XL with the MDF method and both have S30v blade steel.
Here are the result's I got using MDF strop's I made up and mounted to blanks 4 8 and 10K Badak diamond paste I there is a 3K in the picture that's just a mistake on my part,I found that the Badak diamond paste cut alright but was not as fast as the next paste I used witch I will talk about next,I also have made up some strop's out 1/4 MDF the ones in the picture are 3/4 either will work fine but I decided to switch because I have some 2x8 bag's I use to store my leather strop's in and these would not come out of the bag very easy and I do not want to tear the bag's all the time.
From what I can tell the black stuff is metal that the diamond paste removed as the paste's are pink and other color's.
I next tried Poltava Diamond Tool's .5 1 and 3K CBN paste and their .1 diamond paste,when applied to the MDF strop there is a light grey color to the strop and that's about it and the more you strop the more dark the MDF get's with swarf,I also found the Poltava product to much faster then the Badak diamond paste and I think the Poltava stuff is what I going to stick with from now on.
The nice thing about using the MDF is that you can much faster if you want to,I used my Tsprof K02 and I did not use sweeping strokes when I stropped I just pulled the strop back and forth full length in the same spot on the edge and worked my way down the blade and you can also use a surprising amount of pressure and the MDF does not get cut into either using a back and forth stroke method,I'm not saying you should use a ton of pressure when stropping I was playing around to see what would happen.
Here is a picture of my Spyderco Valloton I just picked up for cheap off of a seller on ebay,I also was not going for a perfect mirror polished edge just a really good sharp polished edge,I also sharpened and stropped a Manix 2 XL with the MDF method and both have S30v blade steel.
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