picked up a strop today

moving-van.jpg
 
I’ve been using a strop for a few years now and it’s definitely worth the effort to learn how to use one.
The best thing I ever did to improve my stropping (and overall sharpening technique) was to read this thread.
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=222864&highlight=stropping
I can still remember. The first thing I did after reading it was to make all my knives sharp enough to cut free hanging hair. What a glorious day that was.
You’ll love your strop after this.
 
I was wondering the best technique myself. Say if the strop is only a third the width of the blade length, do you go in a diagonal sweep to cover the whole blade or do you use go straight parrallel across and work portions of the blade? Seems like the latter might yield an uneven edge?
I also want to know if the leather strip needs to be perfectly flat to be able to conform to the edge evenly all the way across? The piece I was planning on using has a few noticible dips in it. :confused: :confused:
 
If the strop is not wide enough, I strop from the hilt to the tip by moving the blade down the length of the strop and at the same time sliding the blade vertically. I have, however, stropped a blade by dividing the length into 2 or 3 segments, and the edge has turned out fine.

I don;t think the leather has to be *perfectly* flat to do the job. One of my strops has a few dips in the leather and another one is actually thicker in the middle than at the edges. It's crowned. This makes it tough and you really have to pay attention to your stropping technique.
 
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