Fixing a rolled edge from stropping?

[Noctis3880]

I've been stropping for a while, but my edge doesn't seem to be getting any sharper(i.e. hair popping). I assume I'm rolling the edge due to too high an angle or too much pressure. Question is, how do I fix it?

Mostly I'm just wondering if it's enough to say, move back to my 12000AO belt on my WorkSharp and start again on the strops from there. Or do I have to move to a lower grit?

 

[Medic1210]

You don't mention what you're stropping on, or what stropping compounds you're using. Your edge should already be popping hair before you hit the strop. The strop is what takes it from hair popping to tree topping sharp. If your knife isn't already really sharp prior to stropping, it will take a LONG time to get it there. The strop is the final step, used to refine an already razor's edge. That being said, there is a possibility you're using too much pressure or too high an angle, or even too soft a strop, and it's rolling across your edge, dulling the knife. Hard to tell without knowing more about your technique.

 

[Jason B.]

Learning to not roll your edge in stropping is just that, learning. It happens to everyone and is something that you will only learn to not do with practice.

To me it sounds more like your not hitting the edge, if you rolled it from stropping it would be dull and have NO bite to the edge. Might still shave and slice paper though depending on how much its been rounded over.

 

[Noctis3880]

Maybe we're getting confused about the definition of "hair popping" here.

To me, hair popping would be exactly as it sounds, holding a single piece of hair and completely cutting through it in the mid-section. The hair catches easily and will often times go straight through without effort. If the edge only splits the hair in half without cutting through, I call that tree-topping/hair whittling and not as sharp. If you're cutting the hair off your arm/leg with the edge touching your skin, I call that shaving sharp.

When I finish on the 1200MX or 12000AO belt on my Work Sharp, my edge will shave and occasionally whittle hair. From there I move onto a DMT 1 micron strop on leather, a 0.5 micron Chromium Oxide strop on balsa wood, then a 0.25 micron diamond strop on balsa. Also, it seems like the 1 micron strop puts some mildly visible scratches on the edge that wasn't there when I finished on the belts, so I've been curious about whether or not I've actually been moving backwards, and also about whether the edge rolling actually happened on the belts first.

Mind you, the edge is more than sharp enough to cut me deep whenever I accidentally graze the edge with my finger. But I just get frustrated at the thought of spending so much money on strops and sub-micron abrasives, and never getting any improvement off of it.

 

[Jason B.]

1 micron on leather will produce NO scratches. The picture I posted in that zombie carbide scraper thread with the split hair hanging over the edge is a 1 micron finish.

If your getting scratches then you probably have dirt or dust on your strop.

Hair popping= when shaving with the knifes edge to your skin the hairs pop up in the air and go flying. This effect is more common with coarser grits.

Holding a single piece of hair and touching it to the edge to make it pop in half if considered a Hanging Hair Test (HHT). Common for testing straight razors and is a level beyond hair splitting. Actually there is 5 HHT levels.

Tree topping= holding the knife just above the skin and only hitting hairs with the edge, upon contact the hair is "shaved" like if the blade was in contact with the skin.

Tree topping is usually equal to hair splitting but not the other way around.

And lastly, are you trying to go to .25 with every knife or only one for fun? 0.25 has no practical value with knives and is a nightmare to truly get a knife to that level.

 

[Medic1210]

Yeah, I was thinking of a different thing. To me, hair popping is when I have a patch of hair on my arm or leg, and the hair seems to pop up off the blade as it's cut. Just shaving sharp to me means the hair is removed with minimal effort, but you don't see the little cut hairs jumping away from the blade.

Edit: Just saw Knifenut beat me to the definition, and also see his definition is the same as mine. Not that it really matters. When you're popping hair or splitting/whittling hair, you're more than sharp enough.

 

[Gotsouthern]

To answer the OP's original question...usually when I roll an edge on a strop I have to step back a bit further than I feel like I should to get the edge strait again. Typically at least to my DMT EF, sometimes all the way back to F. Seldom will my EE iron it out to my liking. As Knifenut said, learning to use light enough pressure on a strop takes time....in my case, a little over a year of playing around with nice strops and quality steels. The way I think about it is thus:

If you're DEAD CERTAIN you're using so little of pressure that SURELY you're accomplishing nothing, then you're there!!

 

[Noctis3880]

1 micron on leather will produce NO scratches. The picture I posted in that zombie carbide scraper thread with the split hair hanging over the edge is a 1 micron finish.

If your getting scratches then you probably have dirt or dust on your strop.

Hair popping= when shaving with the knifes edge to your skin the hairs pop up in the air and go flying. This effect is more common with coarser grits.

Holding a single piece of hair and touching it to the edge to make it pop in half if considered a Hanging Hair Test (HHT). Common for testing straight razors and is a level beyond hair splitting. Actually there is 5 HHT levels.

Tree topping= holding the knife just above the skin and only hitting hairs with the edge, upon contact the hair is "shaved" like if the blade was in contact with the skin.

Tree topping is usually equal to hair splitting but not the other way around.

And lastly, are you trying to go to .25 with every knife or only one for fun? 0.25 has no practical value with knives and is a nightmare to truly get a knife to that level.

It's just for fun, and mostly because I wanted to get the same edge Ankerson got on my Manix 2, which I believe was finished with the 6000 grit tape on the Edge Pro. And I didn't think stropping was that time consuming. I was watching So-Lo's vid on hand sharpening and he said that stropping really only takes maybe 10-20 strokes tops.

I think the issue is not knowing precisely how sharp I should be at each grit before moving onto finer abrasives.

 

[Jason B.]

It's just for fun, and mostly because I wanted to get the same edge Ankerson got on my Manix 2, which I believe was finished with the 6000 grit tape on the Edge Pro. And I didn't think stropping was that time consuming. I was watching So-Lo's vid on hand sharpening and he said that stropping really only takes maybe 10-20 strokes tops.

I think the issue is not knowing precisely how sharp I should be at each grit before moving onto finer abrasives.

Basic stropping does not take much but proper finishing to 0.25 microns is a different story.