Leather strops.

gajinoz

gajinoz

Joined
Sep 2, 2003
Messages
11,650
Anyone know where you can buy good leather strops online and also the paste to use on them? Difficult to find these things where I live.
 
I like the lee valley strop very much. The vertias green compound is very effective, but a b**** to get onto the strop. Using a little bit of mineral oil on the strop helps though.

For a hanging strop (which really is only of use for a straight razor) www.classicshaving.com
 
Gajinoz,

Like you, I find American products difficult to acquire. I've had excellent results with my Edge Pro Apex using a suggestion made by a fellow BF forumite (whose name eludes me :( )

If you have an Edge Pro, order a spare, blank, aluminium plate. Glue a 6" x1" strip of old belt leather to it. Impregnate the leather with a mild abrasive paste. ( I use Autosol ) Using the new "leather stone", strop the edge at a greater angle than the one you sharpen at, remembering always to pull the "leather plate" away from the edge, not push it into the edge of the blade.

Example: I sharpen my Sebenza at 21°. I then strop using the Autosol-coated leather at 24°.

maximus otter
 
Wherever you end up getting your strop, there is one thing to keep in mind. Stropping is very much an individual thing so some strops will work better than others for you.

For my part, I'm a fairly lazy and indolent slob who doesn't like to have to work too hard, so a strop that consists of a piece of leather mounted on a piece of wood works best in most cases. Here's why: A belt-like piece of leather or "barber's strop" must be pulled very tight or the blade bevel will cause the strop to "bend" and you will round over your edge. Exceptions, of course, are any flat ground blade, like a straight razor, that is layed down and drawn across the leather without much elevation of the back edge of the blade - since it is laying flat, the strop doesn't wrap around and round over the edge. Strops that are mounted on a flat surface don't have to be pulled at all and can easily be used on flat grinds, chisel grinds, or bevelled edges.

Actually, I strop mostly flat ground blades that I use for my whittling but I use a wood-mounted strop anyway because I charge different parts/sides of it with various compounds, mostly Flexcut gold, or the chromium oxide/wax green compound. My barber's strop is high quality Russian leather with a padded handle and nice swivel - it's a thing of beauty and I don't like to mar it by drawing my pointed carving knives across the middle of it, so I don't really use it much anymore.

You can make a fine strop by gluing strips of old belts or craft-store leather pieces to the sides of a length of two by two (like they use to make the square balusters on porch or deck railings). You might even want to use a wide enough piece to wrap around a couple of sides so you have a round corner to use on recurve blades or gouges if you use them - be careful not to create "facets" on your curved blades though. A nice four-sided strop will allow you to experiment with different compounds. The leather is not really important - it serves only as a matrix to imbed the polishing compounds, which do all the real work (again, an exception is a barber's strop used for straight razors where the leather polishes and draws out the edge so you want a fine smooth compressed leather).

Lots of variables and exceptions, eh? Here's one constant: Once you start stropping you will rarely put your blades to the stone.

Best regards,

Mike
 
Thanks for the advice guys. Some really interesting stuff to think about there. I guess what I'm going to do is get some bits of leather, a compound or two and practice on a couple of cheap knives.

There is a leather shop in the nearby village, about 40 Km away, so it looks like a good excuse for a trip this weekend and maybe a quick beer at the pub ...

Nothing like a new adventure to keep life interesting eh? :)
 
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