I see. Knife sharpening is new to me, though. With a straight razor it's stropped before and after use. It only needs to be honed every few months or so.
Do any of you guys strop your knives? And what do you use?
The only thing that would be peculiar about sharpening CV is that it's a carbon steel and some abrasives don't like carbon too much--I'm thinking of the SiC and boron carbide type sharpeners you'll find for under $10 at the hardware store. Your Norton will do fine.
Many of us here strop our knives. As opposed to a straight razor and a slacked strop, most here use some kind of wood backing for the leather. Stropping a knife is also a little tricker than with a straight razor because you have to be much more careful about maintaining the angle, and you can't use the spine as a guide like you would with a razor.
There are many different types of strops used here, but most of it revolves around various polishing compounds loaded on to balsa, MDF or leather--lots of home-made strops. There's a whole myriad of compounds to really get into them all, but I would say that the most common compound/strop combo would be chromium oxide ( green compound ) loaded onto leather, MDF or balsa.
There's
another thread around here all about stropping pocket knives. As far as how they will compare to your straight razor... You might find that it takes a little longer to strop a knife than a razor, but for the most part the before/after touch ups still keeps it pretty sharp. You'll still probably need to actually resharpen it more than you would need to with a razor though, simply because of the type of use it's going to see.
I keep all my EDC's sharp enough to dry shave my face. Generally I just touch them up every night on a strop versus right after use, and they stay that sharp for a pretty long time. Every once in a while I'll use them for a task that was a little too rigorous and I'll have to resharpen it that day, but for the most part stropping a knife to maintain its edge is very similar to doing so with a straight razor.
