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The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is$300$250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Harbour Freight Polishing Compounds
- Thread starter HWS
- Start date
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2014
- Messages
- 3,646
I've used them on a bunch of strops, but sometimes have mixed results. They seem to work best for what they are made for, cloth polishing wheels.
My most used strops of all time are loaded with CBN 4 micron that I bought with my KME system. Have both the small Roo KME strops to use on the sharpener, and larger handheld strops. The CBN's are definitely much more expensive by weight, but it seems to go a long while. I've done a LOT of knives, and still using my original tiny 7 gram bottles.
I notice a pretty significant difference when going from a 1500 diamond stone to a 4 micron strop. But it does take a fair amount of time working with 4mic for me to really notice a difference stepping down to 1.5mic. But then, I'm seldom doing kitchen or sushi knives that I want really polished out. If I try to mirror an everyday carry knife, it's only for looks, because I think a small amount of teeth on the edge actually perform better for me. So I'm usually stopping at the stones for actual work, and only stropping to guarantee burr removal and possibly a very light micro bevel. Many knives that I've done to full mirror edge, I end up going back to a Sharpmaker or such and adding a small microbevel at the Spyderco Fine Ceramic level (not sure what grit that is).
But realistically you can use pretty much anything to strop with, as long as the grit is finer than any previous work. Straight leather, paper, cloth (jeans work), auto or metal polish on any of the substrates. Heck, I've even heard of some that just prefer lightweight woods like balsa/bass wood found in any craft store.
My most used strops of all time are loaded with CBN 4 micron that I bought with my KME system. Have both the small Roo KME strops to use on the sharpener, and larger handheld strops. The CBN's are definitely much more expensive by weight, but it seems to go a long while. I've done a LOT of knives, and still using my original tiny 7 gram bottles.
I notice a pretty significant difference when going from a 1500 diamond stone to a 4 micron strop. But it does take a fair amount of time working with 4mic for me to really notice a difference stepping down to 1.5mic. But then, I'm seldom doing kitchen or sushi knives that I want really polished out. If I try to mirror an everyday carry knife, it's only for looks, because I think a small amount of teeth on the edge actually perform better for me. So I'm usually stopping at the stones for actual work, and only stropping to guarantee burr removal and possibly a very light micro bevel. Many knives that I've done to full mirror edge, I end up going back to a Sharpmaker or such and adding a small microbevel at the Spyderco Fine Ceramic level (not sure what grit that is).
But realistically you can use pretty much anything to strop with, as long as the grit is finer than any previous work. Straight leather, paper, cloth (jeans work), auto or metal polish on any of the substrates. Heck, I've even heard of some that just prefer lightweight woods like balsa/bass wood found in any craft store.