Is strop compound necessary?

Leather (actually any animal skin, including our own) does contain some silica, so it is very mildly abrasive. While you can use plain leather as a strop, especially on carbon steel, compound will make the strop cut faster
 
A bare leather strop is useful for scrubbing away very loosely attached burrs, or realigning (straightening) a fine & thin edge that's rolled a little bit. This is why they tend to be more useful for razors (very, very thin edges) than for most knife sharpening tasks. If a knife edge is starting to get dull due to a rounded or blunted apex, a bare leather strop won't do much to fix it. That's where a compounded strop is more useful, if a little true abrasion (metal removal) is needed to thin the apex again and refine it.

It won't take long to realize the limitations of a bare leather strop, if relying only on it to tune up your edges. Even moderately dulled edges won't likely respond to it. A bare leather strop is really at it's best when applying the finishing touches to a newly-sharpened edge (using stones & abrasive strops), as it'll do a nice job of cleaning up the weakened bits of burrs and other loosely-attached debris left on the edge by sharpening with stones and abrasive compounds. At that stage, it can make the difference between a rough shaving edge and a silky-smooth shaving edge and even take it to hair-whittling & tree-topping sharpness, most of which will happen as a result of aligning the very thin, new edge and getting all the debris & clutter left by sharpening out of the way. Other materials like denim, linen or canvas also do a great job in this usage, as they all seem to excel at grabbing the very fine burrs along the edge and either removing them or straightening them.


David
 
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