Attn: Sharpening Junkies! Help!

N

nottoosharp

Joined
Apr 7, 2011
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I Recently bought a paddle strop and Green Chromium Oxide (micro fine honing compound) from an online store (Woodcraft). The strop is double sided. One side I have charged with the Chromium Oxide and this seems to work well with 154cm. I have a 1660 leek G10 with S30V that isn't as responsive to this compound. What should I use to charge the other side with? I have knives with D2, CPM-D2, S30V, M390(a new Benchmade Barrage) that I would like to strop, and lesser steels, AUS8, Sandvik (these shouldn't be a problem).

Also, the strop didn't come with any instructions on how to take care of it. Does it need to be cleaned after after a while? And how?

Thanks for the help!

NTS
 
The other side you can leave as is, plain leather for is is always final step after using charged leather. It does improve the results.
Alternatively, charge the other side with something smaller than 0.5mic that Cr oxide is.
I use 0.25mic diamond spray, few guys use 0.10mic spray, which I still have to try.
As for the steel, it doesn't really matter. 0.5mic cr oxide works fine with various 66-67HRC alloys which are harder to sharpen than factory S30V...
Critical factor is the initial edge you start with. if it isn't fine enough, no amount of stropping will make significant difference. So, for any knife (unless the steel is really POS), first make sure the edge is well formed and sharpened before you go to stropping. I'd say 8K or 10-12K stone should be the final one to get the best results.
Although, even after 4K stone stropping on CrO will do pretty good.
 
If you are looking for a more aggressive compound for the back side of your strop, you may wish to try diamond paste or cubic boron nitride paste in one micron.

www.us-products.com

A bit pricey, of course, but a syringe lasts virtually forever since only a very small amount is required to "load" the strop
 
I like the Hand American diamond sprays. Unfortunately, they seem to be in a transition phase with their website. I couldn't find any products for sale :(
 
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