Another stropping questions. Sorry...

[thombrogan]

How easy is it to strop the entire edge of a recurved knife like a BM710 or Emerson Commander with a regular 3" wide leather belt and compound?

Haven't tried yet, but I'm loving the results on the non-recurved blade and am getting anxious.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Cliff Stamp]

You can just do it in pieces, that is how a lot of people strop all knives. If the recurve is really severe like on a hawksbill you need a fairly narrow strop to work well as you only really hit the part of the edge which is perpendicular to the strop. Well you can press really hard and hit all parts but this then in general has other problems such as excessive edge roll.


-Cliff

 

[thombrogan]

Thanks, Cliff.

There's a Bencmade 710HS in my collection and I want to see how sharp its edge is capable of becoming with my meager skills.

 

[Daniel Koster]

thom - I do recurves all the time. But I strop the knife rather than knife the strop...make sense?

The knife sits in my left hand, the leather (glued to a small board) in my right hand, and I strop away.

Your BM is probably not big enough to warrant such "backwards" usage, but thought I'd just throw it out there anyway...



p.s. you could also try stropping on just the rounded edge of the leather - I do that will smaller knives - takes some getting used to, but it works.

 

[WadeF]

Thom, have you tried the ultra fine white rods for the Sharpmaker? I find they get my knives hair poppin sharp. I have a 4000x and 8000x water stones on order. Mainly to keep my straight razor up to par, but I might have to see what they can do to some of my knives.

I think you should get into straight razor shaving. Can't get much sharper than a straight razor.

 

[T. Erdelyi]

Why couldn't you glue a thin strip of leather to a 1" to 1 1/2" dowel, that should work great for recurves.

 

[thombrogan]

Thanks, Dan. I will work up the nerve and try the edge of the strop.

WadeF,

I haven't tried them since reprofiling my knife with the EdgePro (setting said 18 degrees, but it looks narrower than 15 with the Sharpmaker), but I just may. It was hair-popping sharp at 30-included with just the medium hones, but I wanted sharper than what I had been getting with the ultra-fines and figured stropping might be the ticket.