Strop Advice

C

CCK

Joined
Feb 25, 2015
Messages
29
Hi Folks,
I am looking to buy my first strop, and would appreciate hearing what people like. What works better, a loose belt strop or a strop that is glued to a block of wood? What features make a strop a good strop, as opposed to not so good or inferior? Do I need to use compound, or will a good strop work as well without compound? About how long is good? This will mostly be for folding knives and kitchen knives. Sorry for all of the basic clueless questions. Is there a good primer out there for this stuff?

Thanks!
 
What works better, a loose belt strop or a strop that is glued to a block of wood?
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You want the kind that is mounted to a block of wood rather then the hanging barbershop type

Do I need to use compound, or will a good strop work as well without compound?
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Bare leather does have some natural abrasives in it but the strop will be much more effective if you use a compound. 1micron diamond compound is my favorite

About how long is good?
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This will vary quite a bit depending on the steel and compound used but on average I do around 10strokes per side

If you do a search for "strop" on the forum you should have all the information you need.
 
fsatsil summed it up very well.

I am sure there are better and worse strops.

I use a Flexx Strop 01.
It's not expensive at around $20 and it comes pre-loaded on both sides (3K/6K Grit compound)

It does an excellent job of maintaining my edges.....
 
I've been using a brommeland gun leather strop and love it...It's the perfect size imo. Large enough for a bench strop bit small enough to be easily carried in the field for edge maintenance. I have the 8x3 pre loaded with green and black compounds
 
real easy to make your own strop! 1 1/2 x12'' pinewood and a piece of good leather glued to it,then just buy green or white compound and your set for lifetime of stopping!you don't need to buy every little thing on the net...
 
The three most important things I've learned over the years about stropping is that you want to use a very light pressure, you don't want to over strop, and if you do a good job on the stones you don't need to strop except for quick touch ups.
 
Once sharpened I mainly only use a stop for touching up my blades, unless of course they accidentally make contact with a rock or something and have edge damage or I'm reprofiling them. Other than that I convex em and it's mainly just a strop after that. If you strop regularly and maintain your edge before it's dull you won't need to drag out the sharpening tools as often. That's how I do it atleast. I've beaten the hell outta my bk2 and afterwards I simply stropped it on leather+ black compound, followed by leather+ green compound, then finish up on bare leather. Takes it from working sharp to hair popping sharp in about 6 minutes. Once I get some more leather I'm going to start experimenting with, white, Brown tripoli, and red rouge compounds to fill the gaps between black and green and green and bare leather to see if I notice and increase in sharpeness or speed of sharpening
 
I have a few strops that I bought while trying to figure out how to use one but the one I like and use most is from Stropman. The strop is very flat (leather on both sides...marked Fine and Coarse) which I love when touching up my larger blades, but it works great with folders as well. He also sells the compound and helped with any questions I had. Good luck!
 
If using compound, why using leather? Use paper on hard (and clean) backing, Balsa wood, denim on hard backing etc. instead. And likely, this is giving you less chance of a wire edge than a leather strop.
 
awestib said:
If using compound, why using leather? Use paper on hard (and clean) backing, Balsa wood, denim on hard backing etc. instead. And likely, this is giving you less chance of a wire edge than a leather strop.
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My knives are mostly convexed, I get better results with leather and compounds. On my scandi grinds I will usually just smear compound on a paint stirring stick. Thou occasionally I'm use the leather with compounds to create a slight micro bevel
 
+1 for the Stropman strop. I also use a strop block from knives plus that works well too.
 
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