Is strop compound necessary?

Better results with the compounds.

Bare leather doesn't remove any steel
 
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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