Should you use different compounds on the same strop?

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Kirk_Ferentz

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Feb 16, 2010
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I'm just beginning to learn how to strop. I love free-handed sharpening on water stones, but wanted to give stropping a try and perhaps use it for routine maintenance of my edges.

I picked up one of these leather strops: http://www.chefknivestogo.com/haamsplest.html

When I got it and saw that it had a magnetic strip on the back, I decided to make a block with some steel bolted on top so that I could attach and detach it. The compound that I have is the dmt variety pack ... 1 micron, 3 micron and 6? micron pastes I believe?

Anyway, should I buy two other strops and only use one compound on each strop? It would be easy to throw different magnetic backed strops on the block. Or is there a way to clean compound off the strop and use the same one for different compounds?

Any other advice about avoiding newbie mistakes is also appreciated.
 
Each paste needs its own strop. Not only is it a complete waste of diamond paste(no cheap thing) to recoat a strop whenever you change pastes, but you would likely only be using the 6 micron for all three stropping sessions. When mixing stropping materials, it's the one with the largest abrasive size that will touch the edge.
 
The only way I'd consider it is, if you're 're-purposing' a strop previously used with a very fine compound, and applying a coarser compound. As mentioned above, the coarser compound will define the performance of the strop, rendering anything finer on the strop pretty much moot & ineffective.
 
Use the diamond compounds on paint sticks or MDF board. Use the leather strop bare.
 
Generally speaking, the answer is no. Some commercial stropping compounds DO intentionally have several grit sizes in the same compound - Flexcut Gold comes to mind immediately, and it is very good stuff. I've experimented with coarser compounds mixed with very fine ones trying to find out if the finer particles will "ride" the larger and give a better performance than the coarse grit by itself. By whatever mechanism is in play, it does, but using coarser grits for stropping is not the usual order of things. I have had great success refreshing hard-use knives and machetes with a fairly coarse multi-grit strop (a blend of 220 and 1200 grit SiC - it works noticeably better than the 220 plain) following it up with a fine single-grit strop to finish. This is particularly effective for convex edged blades, but works well on V bevels as well. The multi-grit compound does effectively default to the lower grit value for all practical purposes, just works better as a blend.
 
Bill DeShivs said:
Use the diamond compounds on paint sticks or MDF board. Use the leather strop bare.
Click to expand...

Am I right in thinking that the bare leather strop would come after using the finest paste? Using some paint sticks would certainly be cheaper than buying two more leather strips.
 
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