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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.
Regarding the strop
- Thread starter The_Guide
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Jason B.
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
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Thanks for reminding me. I will use the spatula blade on my Dr. to sort my pills.
BTW- should I be stropping the edge of my spatula blade, and if so....What grit?
1/10 micron/200,000 mesh
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OK, I am going to fess up. I bought a couple of belts at a thrift store, gorilla glued them to some pine 2x4s cut down on my table saw, and applied compound. The green worked in ok at first, but now, the leather has frayed and I do not have a good smooth surface. The white jewelers rouge would not take at all in a uniform way due to the cheap thrift store belt. I will now be rethinking my strops. Wider than I did before, and good quality leather from Jantz that will stay smooth and not fray or get bumpy. I have some real nice oak planks to add an upgrade. Wisdom is not achieved by walking through a door, but by walking a path......
Remember to compress the leather before you mount it onto the boards. It's easy to do and makes a big difference in how the strops perform. Wet it down the same way you would for molding a leather sheath, then roll the hell out of it with a heavy roller. The finest old barber strops were made using horsehide that had been 'boned' by hand for several days! (That's rubbing it and compressing it in some fashion with a rounded tool. This brings the silicates to the surface of the leather.) I haven't been able to find any of these being sold new no matter how hard I've searched. I can find some horsehide strops (cheaper to buy the whole horse!) but none that have been boned into 'Russian Leather.' I have an old one, but for my purposes cow hide works just as well. If I shaved with a straight razor I'd certainly use the horsehide. (I haven't shaved since my date of discharge 40+ years ago....
)Stitchawl
Jason B.
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
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Remember to compress the leather before you mount it onto the boards. It's easy to do and makes a big difference in how the strops perform. Wet it down the same way you would for molding a leather sheath, then roll the hell out of it with a heavy roller. The finest old barber strops were made using horsehide that had been 'boned' by hand for several days! (That's rubbing it and compressing it in some fashion with a rounded tool. This brings the silicates to the surface of the leather.) I haven't been able to find any of these being sold new no matter how hard I've searched. I can find some horsehide strops (cheaper to buy the whole horse!) but none that have been boned into 'Russian Leather.' I have an old one, but for my purposes cow hide works just as well. If I shaved with a straight razor I'd certainly use the horsehide. (I haven't shaved since my date of discharge 40+ years ago....
Stitchawl
Good advice but it would be a useless step if the leather was pre-finished and compound was to be applied.
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Ok, so I have 3 flavors of strops....White for coarse, green for fine, and Stitch's old school boned pseudo horse hide from cows plain leather. I am puttin a slope to my learnin curve. I will be makin all 3. Unless, of course, I need a transitional grit somewhere in between.....Uh oh, not again...
Just a segway, when my wife got home tonight, she could see that I was distracted. "What is wrong dear?" I replied, "My strops are not holding their compound honey, my blades are dull and it is really gettin to me!" I give God a lot thanks that I am able to worry about stuff like that. I am hugely blessed.
Just a segway, when my wife got home tonight, she could see that I was distracted. "What is wrong dear?" I replied, "My strops are not holding their compound honey, my blades are dull and it is really gettin to me!" I give God a lot thanks that I am able to worry about stuff like that. I am hugely blessed.
Jason B.
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
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No mess and it works better http://www.knifecenter.com/kc_new/store_detail.html?s=DMTDPK
Absolutely! cj65 said he was going to purchase some of Jantz Supply's cowhide. They only sell veggie tanned (untreated tooling leather) squares, so no problem compressing them. There is one other supplier who is selling (at twice the price of Jantz) tooling leather for strops, and theirs is already compressed. If I remember correctly, they wanted $14.95 USD for a piece of leather 4"x12" with piece of wood to mount it on. Jantz sells 12"x12" for $9.95 USD. That's good enough for three good strops! But ya gotta compress it first if you want a really good strop. It can be used uncompressed too, but there is more chance of rounding an edge, especially with larger heavier blades. Compressing the leather reduces the chance of that happening as well as bringing more silicates to the surface of the leather. Thinking about it, I guess that's probably not so important when we use compounds on it though...
Stitchawl
It's always a good idea to purchase several of these sheets of leather so you can have complete sets of strops in each room of the house....
That happens a lot as we get older....
Amen! It could be a whole lot worse. We could be addicted to 'Wheel of Fortune!'
Stitchawl
DMT makes some good products. :thumbup: I keep their Aligner in my backpack and use their Diamond card with it, just for touch-ups in the woods. Not a particularly polished edge but fine for bushcraft. But for diamond paste I like to use the .25 micron stuff on a smooth leather strop. I don't know if DMT sells that. I get it from other sites.
Stitchawl
Jason B.
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That's how I was before I got the DMT paste using the 6,3,1 micron DMT paste makes a big difference in finished sharpness, its amazing how much sharper the edge is by the time you get to the 1 micron. Try it out you might find yourself not using 0.25 anymore unless your like me and have a sharpening problem.
Why don't you just get strop leather instead of doing all that work?
That's how I was before I got the DMT paste using the 6,3,1 micron DMT paste makes a big difference in finished sharpness, its amazing how much sharper the edge is by the time you get to the 1 micron. Try it out you might find yourself not using 0.25 anymore unless your like me and have a sharpening problem.
Hello. My name is Stitchawl, and I'm a sharp-aholic.
Tell me... do I really need to go to .25mics for my pocket knife? I use it to cut loose threads, open envelopes, cut my apple, open Fu@%!ng clamshell packaging, etc.! No! I do it because I have a hobby-abuse problem. Do I need a $150 Benchmade axis lock. No! I could do the same work with a 100Yen shop (Dollar Shop, but I live in Japan,) made in Pakistan scout knife. But I have a hobby-abuse problem. My wife is ready to leave me. She'll take the dog and the kid when she goes. (Damn kid is 33 years old. I wish she'd take him soon...
Actually, I wish I had a dog too...) I have a hobby-abuse problem. All right. All right. I'll order the range of the DMT diamond pastes and try them. What do I have left to lose?
What do you use as a surface for the paste? Leather or hardboard?
I'm not sure whatcha mean here. If you are referring to compressing the leather for the strop, it's really no work. Leather working is a hobby of mine, (another abuse potential... ) and turning a piece of tooling hide into a very good strop is just five minutes work. The difference between spending $50-$100 USD on a manufactured strop, or $10 plus 5 minutes work for three strops seems to favor my doing it. And the difference between a compressed leather and uncompressed leather is large enough to warrant the five minutes spent. Try it. You'll like it! Stitchawl
Jason B.
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I like handamerican leather found at woodcraft.com and the peices you can order for the JRE convex sharpener are awsome for use with compound. No work is needed for these peices of leather and you can get a lot of it for cheap. You will like the diamond paste after the first time you use it you will wonder why you ever used anything else, better polish, sharper edge....what's not to love.
Almost forgot, MDF seems to work the best with diamond paste leather is good too but seems to work slower.
Almost forgot, MDF seems to work the best with diamond paste leather is good too but seems to work slower.
I like handamerican leather found at woodcraft.com and the peices you can order for the JRE convex sharpener are awsome for use with compound. No work is needed for these peices of leather and you can get a lot of it for cheap. You will like the diamond paste after the first time you use it you will wonder why you ever used anything else, better polish, sharper edge....what's not to love.
Almost forgot, MDF seems to work the best with diamond paste leather is good too but seems to work slower.
I have a full dozen of the HandAmerican strops right now. (Great strops, but not what I'd call cheap.) 3 of them are the old HA double sided strops with the corian plate between them, made to slide into the corian base. One is double sided rough leather, the other two both sides smooth. The others are all single sided with the magnetic backings for their magnetic base. (After all this time I still can't decide which base I like better!!!
) I have one of the HA black textured leather and one of their Red textured leather strops too. These two don't receive any compound. They are used bare. Again, I can't see any difference, but then, I'm not using them for straight razors with my chin as the measuring device. I only use them for knives and wood working tools.I like the results with the .25 micron diamond paste. Very fast cutting leaving a nice polished edge. I've never tried the coarser meshes of diamond, instead always using the other various compounds or polishing tapes. Recently I've been able to get the 3M polishing sheets that I cut to fit my EdgePro Apex in grits of 2,000, 4,000, 8,000, and 10,000. Today I was in a shop in Kobe that sold the 15,000 grit sheets. (I couldn't resist.... De debil made me do it!
Just my addiction kicking in.) The EdgePro allows me to keep an absolutely perfect angle when I sharpen, so I like to take the edge as far as possible with it. This shop had three isles of nothing but hand sharpening equipment, including stones mined in northern Kyoto selling for $1,000 USD. I was able to resist those... :jerkit: Maybe if someone leaves me a $2,000.000 hairloom tanto I'll buy it to sharpen on. For my knives, ordinary water stones, diamonds, and stropping will have to do. I think it's a good thing my Japanese reading skills are not good or I'd have come home a lot poorer... 
Tonight I'll order the DMT pastes. Should take about two weeks to get them here. Meanwhile I'll make up some base-mounted MDF platforms to put them on. Thanks for the tip.Stitchawl
Jason B.
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its a little hard adjusting to using MDF as a strop because you must keep the exact angle. should not be a problem for you because your perfect angles made by the edge pro help with "locking" the bevel to the surface, you'll know what I mean when you use it.
I think I've solved that problem of stropping at the 'exact' angle needed. This is where I use the DMT Aligner clamp. I use it without the DMT stones or guide rods, but instead, either slide the clamp's angle adjusters along side of the strop (or sand paper if I'm doing a scarysharp job,) or else use a short piece of fishtank plastic hose split down the length and wrapped around the bottom of the guide to protect it from abrasion while guiding it on the strop. This gives me the perfection of a clamp guided sharpener while doing what is usually freehanded stropping! I just have to pre-measure and set the EdgePro angle to match what will result from using the DMT Aligner clamp. Of course, when using the clamp in this fashion for stropping I draw the blade backwards rather than push it into the edge. The system works very, very well. Especially considering that I really don't need it to work this well...
Stitchawl.