Strop more, sharpen less?

T

Tseg

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Aug 25, 2018
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I mainly use S35VN steel. I chop down 15-20 boxes for my recycling bin a week. Every few weeks my blade slices through paper like butter less easily. At that point I would "sharpen" my knife again, 2K/6K stone by hand ~20 strokes on each side of stone and each side of blade and then 3 micron / 1 micron / .5 micron strop. My blades would be back to razor sharp.

More recently after several weeks of use I'd take my knife just through the 3/1/.5 micron stropping exercise, avoiding the stone, and it seems my knives get back to razor sharpness as if I had taken them to stone. I'm sure this is much healthier for the longevity of my blades. Since I've only started to do this is the past month obviously I will have to stone sharpen at some point, but might that be once a month, every other month...?

Anyone else have this observation? Is there a downside to this approach? Will I end up with the same amount of stone strokes over time, just more in 1 sitting when I eventually do my sharpening? What is "normal". What is "optimized'.
 
i think people oversharpen their knives the way some people overclean their guns. Sometimes mild maintenance is all thats needed. I generally strop until I need to sharpen. Hogging off metal for hogging off metal's sake isn't needed.

Then again, I ascribe to the Church of the Convex Edge:P
 
For me I find S35VN to strop back to razor sharp the easiest given there is no edge damage. I’ve also had success stropping M390,20CV and 204P back so long as it’s not too far gone. Is is a lot more work though. Stropping will eventually take away that keen edge and give you more of a convexed secondary bevel, this bevel will be fixed at the next major sharpening. As long as you are using diamonds to sharpen, your major sessions shouldn’t take more than a couple extra strokes.
 
I have used nothing but a strop with .5 micron dmt paste for almost a month now on my edc. The other side is bare leather. Still has a shaving edge. It works great for CRK S35VN and my last XM in M390.

My initial edge was up to 1200 at the 18dps side . Putting that initial high quality edge is what allows easy up keep.

Sure there are a couple small dull spots but it's not something you notice during use . Unless you sit around slicing phone book paper all day.


More great info above ∆∆
 
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I seem to not be great at stropping. I seem to typically round the edge.

That means I typically use a couple strokes on my Spyderco ultrafines in place of a strop. It gets the knives sharp enough to shave easily without being hair whittling.

I don’t know if I’ll wear a knife blade away in my lifetime doing this but definitely stropping is healthier for blade longevity. I have even heard some people who prefer not to use anything but bare leather due to them feeling even the diamond sprays or paste can needlessly waste steel; only using them for stropping jobs that need them.
 
I'm here to represent the opposite camp.
That being :
Loose the strop.
Just use the stones (Edge Pro).
A very few strokes on the two stones; finishing very lightly. With some partial stokes, one or two per side edge leading, then edge trailing and . . .
Why do I want to strop again . . . ? . . . hmmmm . . . the edge whittles hair . . . . do I need a "better" edge than that . . . . oh well the strops and all those congealed tubes of goop look good on the shelf to build up my photos of my "vast:p" selection of sharpening paraphernalia.

That from someone who, at one time, set up a strop at work for everyone to use just for sharpening box knives.

What do I use now at work for a quick touch up of a box knife ? No Edge Pro in sight.
Two hand held DMT aligner stones; the green 1200 and the pink 8,000.

Page down in this link to the Spyderco Para2 DLT S30V touched up hand held with the little DMT stone. Link>>>>
 
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Wowbagger said:
I'm here to represent the opposite camp.
That being :
Loose the strop.
Just use the stones (Edge Pro).
A very few strokes on the two stones; finishing very lightly. With some partial stokes, one or two per side edge leading, then edge trailing and . . .
Why do I want to strop again . . . ? . . . hmmmm . . . the edge whittles hair . . . . do I need a "better" edge than that . . . . oh well the strop and all those congealed tubes of goop look good on the shelf to build up my photos of my vast selection of sharpening paraphernalia.

That from someone who, at one time, set up a strop at work for everyone to use just for sharpening box knives.

What do I use now at work for a quick touch up of a box knife ? No Edge Pro in sight.
Two hand held DMT aligner stones; the green 1200 and the pink 8,000.

Page down in this link to the Spyderco Para2 DLT S30V touched up hand held with the little DMT stone. Link>>>>
Click to expand...

Rumor is a knife's micro-edge folds over with use and a strop just straightens that edge back out to a point, using a stone will just wear away that folded over micro-edge to make it sharp again. Both likely have the same end result in the near term. Long term this is what I look to avoid:

 
Anyone else have this observation? Is there a downside to this approach?
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Yes. The edge gets rounded over and you end up wedging firm media, like a box cut in the middle, apart rather than cutting the media. This takes more horse power.

Tseg said:
Will I end up with the same amount of stone strokes over time,
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Stroppers ten to count the strokes by the decimal point or by the hundred. 30 strokes, 50 etc., then . . . are you ready ? . . . go to the next strop then the next . . . !?

What ? Why? one can go just a few strokes per stone and be at hair whittling after a few stones in only 50 strokes total.

Yes stones take off significant amounts of steel BUT, and I have a huge but, I mostly use the coarser stones to remove metal Behind the edge, knocking back the angle and thinning that area to maintain the geometry; this vastly improves the cutting performance of the knife, then the finer stones are pretty much only taking off edge steel "wearing" the knife dimensions away. Done right it is miniscule. Unless one has dings in the edge or other edge trauma, which strops are not going to fix, I know it is possible to go a very long time with frequent sharpening on stones only and not effect the blade size to a significant degree.

What is "normal".
Click to expand...
Stropping

What is "optimized'.
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Edge Pro sharpening; which wears the blade the least amount possible and makes for a vastly superior edge geometry for the city slicker folding knife work you and I are talking about.

Batoning with a wood craft knife is another activity.
 
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I concur that most over sharpen when a bit of stropping will straighten the edge and restore sharpness .—————————The way I explain it to my customers, as far as using a butchers steel or stropping is...........Edges roll over and get distorted long before they lose sharpness. Realign the edge and your good to go!
 
Tseg said:
Rumor is a knife's micro-edge folds over with use and a strop just straightens that edge back out to a point, using a stone will just wear away that folded over micro-edge
Click to expand...
In practice I find that the slightly folded over edge tends to scrape along the softer material of the strop and just kind of rakes abrasive and strop material up like a woodworking hand scraper.
Where as a fine fairly hard stone, like a Spyderco Ultra Fine Ceramic or a Shapton Pro . . . say 5,000 tends to effectively unbend this fold and then refine it.

Some, Cliff Stamp, tend to say take off that fatigued material by drawing the edge perpendicular to the stone to cut it off. I . . . in actual practice do not find that to be all that important though for ultimate edge durability he is probably right.

No . . . after all is said and done . . . meaning farting around with all this nonsense for a decade or more on my work knives . . . strops . . . simply . . . for other than shaving razors . . . in a word . . .
sucks.
 
Tseg said:
32376483258_91750231e5_z.jpg
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Hmmmmm
correct me if I am wrong but it looks like some body has been hollow grinding that bad boy on a power grinder. The half a butterfly tends to give it away.

A little touch up on say a 4,000 stone then an 8,000 stone would take a hunert' years to do that kind of damage.
Easy there big fella.
 
Here's an old Uncle Henry that I bought in 1970. I carried & used this knife every single day for over 30 years before I retired it & it has never seen a sharpening stone. It was only stroped on bare cardboard boxes to keep it sharp. The only reason I retired it was that the tip of main clip blade had so much material removed that it was riding well above the liner & scales, and I was getting nicked once in a while when I put my hand in my pocket. Now granted, Schrade wasn't using any super steel back then, but yes, stroping will remove some metal, but it'll take about 30 years & you have to be pretty obsessive about it.:)
IMG_0680-X3.jpg
 
I have found I prefer to touch up my carry knife after a days use ... that might be a light stropping or might be a few passes on a ceramic hone ...

I find it's easy to keep them sharp that way ... and it's much faster and easier on the blade not over sharpening and cutting life span off the blade.

So if you are getting good results ... I would lean to agreeing that unless you have used a knife enough to dull it considerable ... a strop or ceramic hone does great maintainimg your edge.

You can also use a stone with light trailing strokes if you don't have a hone or strop handy.
 
I'm not convinced stropping works very well on high carbide super steels. I get better results with light steeling.
 
Whether I strop or not is based mainly on what finish I want to preserve at the edge, and not just to maintain the sharpness in general. More often than not, I tend to prefer edges at around 320-400 grit or so when sharpened on oilstones, or around 325-600 if using a diamond hone to sharpen. Most compound-based stropping won't maintain either for very long without tending to polish away the tooth from such edges. So, if I strop those at all, I usually just use a bare strop of leather or denim, or even a sheet of plain paper laid over the stone.

If I were looking to maintain more polished edges in the first place, then a suitable strop with the right compound could maintain that for a very long time, before eventually needing to reset the edge on a stone. I used to maintain some of my kitchen knives at a near-mirror, shallow & thin convex. That's a perfect fit for a denim strop with some white rouge or similar compound. But now, I'm even beginning to drift away from that, in favor of finishing the same knives on my India stone's 'Fine' side (320-400) and stropping on the bare sheet of paper laid atop the oiled stone.

BTW, I don't worry much anymore about shortening the life of the blade by favoring sharpening over stropping. With sharpening on stones, after one gets a feel for how much TLC an edge actually needs, it becomes easier to dial down the number of passes and the pressure used, in order to restore sharpness and toothy bite and do no more. Oftentimes, that means no more than 3-10 breezy-light passes per side on the finishing stone alone, and it's done.
 
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Tseg said:
I mainly use S35VN steel. I chop down 15-20 boxes for my recycling bin a week. Every few weeks my blade slices through paper like butter less easily. At that point I would "sharpen" my knife again, 2K/6K stone by hand ~20 strokes on each side of stone and each side of blade and then 3 micron / 1 micron / .5 micron strop. My blades would be back to razor sharp.

More recently after several weeks of use I'd take my knife just through the 3/1/.5 micron stropping exercise, avoiding the stone, and it seems my knives get back to razor sharpness as if I had taken them to stone. I'm sure this is much healthier for the longevity of my blades. Since I've only started to do this is the past month obviously I will have to stone sharpen at some point, but might that be once a month, every other month...?

Anyone else have this observation? Is there a downside to this approach? Will I end up with the same amount of stone strokes over time, just more in 1 sitting when I eventually do my sharpening? What is "normal". What is "optimized'.
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It may last longer using a complete diamond progression. And every time you strop you are just moving that edge back and forth, it will not last too long after stropping to many times as it gets weaker each time. In which you will then want to remove the damaged apex and start anew.
 
Something occurred to me, writing in my previous post about the kitchen knives I used to maintain on a denim strop with white rouge. Part of the reason I'm drifting away from that strategy is because I frequently noticed that although the edge could be made extremely sharp that way (beautiful slicing), it also tended to become very weak in doing so; too thin for it's own good, near the apex. The apex was burring (rolling) too easily in use. So I was indeed maintaining the edge that way, on the abrasive polishing strop. But I was also doing it much more often than I currently need to, in maintaining the 320-400 grit edge on a stone with only occasional steeling on a smooth (polished) kitchen steel or stropping on a bare sheet of paper. Hadn't even thought of that contrast in upkeep frequency between the two strategies, until now.
 
Wowbagger said:
Hmmmmm
correct me if I am wrong but it looks like some body has been hollow grinding that bad boy on a power grinder. The half a butterfly tends to give it away.

A little touch up on say a 4,000 stone then an 8,000 stone would take a hunert' years to do that kind of damage.
Easy there big fella.
Click to expand...
In full discloser, I snagged a picture off a you tube video as a symbolic reference to the discussion. I've not actually worn out a blade myself.
 
You'll need to use a medium or coarser grit stone when just touching up your blade with a finer grit doesn't do the job. Easy as that.

Whether you strop or simply use only the finer side of your combo stone or even a finer stone makes no real difference. Each just wears away fine particles of your blade. How you do it isn't so important.
Look - extra coarse to thin a blade or otherwise reshape it (incl removing chips)
coarse to set a new bevel (or sharpening a very dull blade)
medium (800-2k) for sharpening a blade that isn't too dull
fine/polishing for whatever final edge you want/touch up

You mostly needed a touch up. As far as number of strokes, a number of factors change that. You sharpen to the result, not to a set count.
 
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