- Joined
- Jun 5, 2006
- Messages
- 88
I ordered my first strop on Saturday--a Stropman 4STROKE strop. It arrived Monday. Since then, I've taken 10+ knives (below) of various steel types, which were sharpened either on Spyderco Bench stones (medium, fine, and ultra fine) or the Spyderco Sharpmaker (coarse diamond, medium, fine, and ultra fine) and polished them to mirror-finish edges.
The edges coming off the ultra fine ceramics were fairly reflective, but with the strop I'm achieving a mirror finish. I opted to get the fourth side as smooth leather, but I'm still using a compound on it (red). The 4STROKE arrived with 4 compounds (black coarse, white medium, green fine, red polish) and I'm using all 4 to great effect.
This is my first time stropping and I'm now completely sold on it--it definitely gives me a huge improvement over finishing on the Spyderco ultra fine stones. I suspect that my years of experiencing with sharpening knives by hand on ceramic bench stones (which IMO tend to be less forgiving on excess pressure than other types of stone) may have helped a fair amount, since the first knife I used on the 4 stroke came out beautifully (sharper, nicely polished, no edge dulling at all) and it only took a few minutes.
Knives stropped so far:
s30v Spyderco Paramilitary 2
D2 steel Kershaw Leek (combo edge)
154CM Benchmade 943
ATS 34 Kershaw Hawk Ti
Sandvik 14c28n Kershaw Skyline (x2), NRG 1740, Packrat
425? - Buck Ti - 560
8Cr13MoV - Kershaw Chill, OD2
3Cr13 - Spyderco Honeybee
The edges coming off the ultra fine ceramics were fairly reflective, but with the strop I'm achieving a mirror finish. I opted to get the fourth side as smooth leather, but I'm still using a compound on it (red). The 4STROKE arrived with 4 compounds (black coarse, white medium, green fine, red polish) and I'm using all 4 to great effect.
This is my first time stropping and I'm now completely sold on it--it definitely gives me a huge improvement over finishing on the Spyderco ultra fine stones. I suspect that my years of experiencing with sharpening knives by hand on ceramic bench stones (which IMO tend to be less forgiving on excess pressure than other types of stone) may have helped a fair amount, since the first knife I used on the 4 stroke came out beautifully (sharper, nicely polished, no edge dulling at all) and it only took a few minutes.
Knives stropped so far:
s30v Spyderco Paramilitary 2
D2 steel Kershaw Leek (combo edge)
154CM Benchmade 943
ATS 34 Kershaw Hawk Ti
Sandvik 14c28n Kershaw Skyline (x2), NRG 1740, Packrat
425? - Buck Ti - 560
8Cr13MoV - Kershaw Chill, OD2
3Cr13 - Spyderco Honeybee