After what grit stone do you strop?

[ncrockclimb]

I know this is a questions with no "right" answer. However, I am interested in learning how people are sharpening and what grit progression they are following.

I went through a phase where I was working up to my KME 1500 grit diamond stones, then stropping on Stropman black, white and red compounds. The resulting edge was smooth and sharp, and almost silently parted catalog paper. Over the last few weeks I have sharpened a few of my knives on KME 320 grit diamond stones, then stropped with Flexcut gold. This edge has bite, but will shave hairs and cut paper. It will also cut rope more effectively than the "smooth" edge. I have not been using the toothy edge long enough to judge if it will last as long as the "smooth" edge.

That is my story. What is yours?

 

[bucketstove]

Hi,

How do you remove the burr?
How does your edge compare, off the 1500 stone without stropping?

I don't strop, I sharpen/deburr/microbevel on dollar tree stone , might be 120 to 240 grit
Sometimes I microbevel on 600 grit diamond from harbor freight
It always gets some kind of shaving sharp,
it will slice phonebook paper / uline catalog which is thin like phonebook but glossy not ridged,
and lately I've come to realize most of the time it sharp enough to whittle beard hair
if it snaggish or sluggish on paper i can notice the same on beard hair, and vice versa ...

 

[ncrockclimb]

I do two things to remove the burr. After establishing it on a given stone, I do a couple of blade forward swipes with very light pressure, then flip and repeat. I do this a total of three or four times on each side. I then "slice" the edge into the end of a small pice of wood. After this, I cannot discern any burr.

The edge off the 1500 before stropping is smoother than the 320 after stropping. It shaves arm hair without effort, and smoothly slices through catalog paper. The incremental gain from 1500 to stropping is relatively small, but noticeable.

 

[HeavyHanded]

I almost always finish with some sort of stropping. Even if I'm finishing off on a 6 or 8k waterstone, unless in a hurry I will at least strop on newspaper or similar. If I am working at lower grit values I will still finish minimum with a few passes on paper. This shines up any residual burrs and cleans up the edge a bit.

Often I will reclaim some of the mud off the stone - whether a waterstone, combination stone, even a diamond plate used with water - and tap a few smears on a sheet of paper to strop on that using a Washboard or at least wrapped around another dry stone.

FWIW I believe the rougher finish will often outperform a finer one for EDU, sometimes by by several X if the chore/steel/finish all work well together. I try to pair the finish to the job - pressure back into the blade is what normally kills the edge, so whatever strategy (rough/draw cut, fine/press cut, something between) that reduces this during cutting is the way to go.

 

[awestib]

Currently I also try to avoid any kind of stropping and the goal is to cross cut (90 deg to the fiber I guess) TB paper cleanly which I not always can achieve off my beloved coarse DMT stone. If I believe what I have read about edge leading strokes particularly on fixed abrasives like the DMT, the apex off that stone is IMO best for my kitchen knives. Some stropping with compound after removes almost immediately the "bite" of that edge.

 

[bgentry]

Stropping is a strange thing, because it's normally done on a soft backing and with *very* minimal abrasive. In my experience, stropping is capable of removing small amounts of burr from an edge sharpened on almost any grit stone. If you're super super good at deburring, stropping after a fairly coarse stone doesn't really do much. It might do just a tiny bit of polishing, but it's usually pretty minimal.

The harder the backing and the more coarse the compound, the more stropping can do. I don't have a lot of experience with this; I'll leave specifics to Martin (Heavy Handed).

I can say that stropping has been sort of a crutch for me in the past; mainly because my deburring technique needed work. It still does in fact! But I'm better now and the results I get from mild stropping don't really change the edge much.

For me, this question really leads to another: What kind of finish do you want and how to do you get there? Murray Carter and John Juranich both advocate a primary edge made with a somewhat coarse stone, then a minimal microbevel made with a very fine stone. In the case of Carter, he says something like 1000/6000 or 800/4000, or anything in that ballpark. Juranich is more general and says "the coarsest stone you've got and the finest stone you've got".

I think they both a probably shooting for a common goal: Something like a coarse edge with finely polished "teeth".

The more I learn about sharpening, the less I seem to know.

Brian.

 

[Obsessed with Edges]

More often than not, lately I've not stropped my edges much, if at all. I've found it's better to do the finishing touches on a hone/stone that is best-suited to the steel, i.e. able to cut it cleanly at LIGHT PRESSURE (the lighter, the better) and therefore leave it relatively burr-free. At most, I'll sometimes swipe the edge on my jeans when finishing up, and that's usually enough to strip away any hanging remnants of burrs. I'll also use the edge of a leather sheath or slipcase similarly, or occasionally my leather belt.

I have at times found a denim strop with white rouge or a similar aggressive compound to be useful on softer/cheaper blades (usually stainless) that otherwise don't want to let go of tenacious and very ductile burrs typically seen on such blades.


David

 

[Magnaminous_G]

I almost always finish with some sort of stropping. Even if I'm finishing off on a 6 or 8k waterstone, unless in a hurry I will at least strop on newspaper or similar. If I am working at lower grit values I will still finish minimum with a few passes on paper.

+1. Same here. Regardless of where I stop on the grit scale, I always strop. Even if it's a quick and dirty job with a cinder block, the edge still gets some passes on the back of my belt or on my jeans.

 

[collim1]

Some of my knives are finished on a 6k whetstone before stripping.

For a lot of my knives 1200 is the finest they see before the strop. That's good enough for most work. My kitchen knives I like to take to a higher finish.

 

[postoak]

Is using polishing compound on a belt sander considered stropping, or is that just when you use a hand strop?

As for burrs, isn't running your edge through wood until you don't feel the burr anymore good enough deburring?

I have a hand strop backed by wood and it has considerable give to it. After reading the sticky post on stropping I pretty much stopped using it as I'm afraid I'll just dull the blade.

Barber strops were used just to straighten the edge; they didn't remove metal, right?

 

[Obsessed with Edges]

Is using polishing compound on a belt sander considered stropping, or is that just when you use a hand strop?

Depending on the belt used (leather, fabric, ???), it might be close enough in terms of how it finishes or refines the edge.

As for burrs, isn't running your edge through wood until you don't feel the burr anymore good enough deburring?

Again, it depends. Some burrs on some steels won't be fazed at all by this method (examples I've seen: VG-10, ATS-34, some 420HC), and it takes some abrasion with compound to remove such burrs.

I have a hand strop backed by wood and it has considerable give to it. After reading the sticky post on stropping I pretty much stopped using it as I'm afraid I'll just dull the blade.

If technique is good, with a LOW held angle and very, very light pressure (both which minimize rolling of the leather around the apex), some softish strops can still be effective. Consider how many 'strop' on their jeans, backed only by their own thigh. Firmer strops minimize the risk of rounding the apex, especially if technique isn't as good.

Barber strops were used just to straighten the edge; they didn't remove metal, right?

Another 'It depends...' answer. If compound is used, it removes metal. If bare leather, it essentially just realigns a very fine & thin edge, and strips away very weak bits of burrs loosely attached to the edge.


David

 

[postoak]

Thanks David, for answering all my questions.

I meant, yes, using leather belts on a sander with polishing compounds.

It's been decades since I used a barber who had one of those leather strops, but I'm positive no polishing compounds were used.

 

[Ratman79]

i agree with everyone and would tell the OP that as long as you successfully raise a burr then flip it to the other side and finally remove it you will have an apexed edge and can stop wherever

i like to go to at least 4k and then lightly strop on leather loaded with 1u diamond paste

as u correctly observed, coarser edges excel at rope cuts and similar activities while polished ones are better for chopping and push-cutting applications.

how u will be using your knife should help you decide where to stop gritwise

 

[Twindog]

I strop after the final stone, no matter what the grit. Stropping always improves the performance of my edge.