Stropping: angle plus pressure

I've been sharpening successfully for over 40 years, but my journey into stropping with polishing compound just started this weekend. First try was was not so good, but by last night it's working pretty well, but I'm not seeing any improvement in cutting . . . yet. We shall see.
 
I haven't found a universal stropping method, unfortunately. It just depends on the particular knife/grind/steel. Sometimes light pressure at the exact angle works best. Other times a slightly lower or higher angle works better. Sometimes balsa is best. Other times suede or smooth leather. This is where the BESS tester is your friend.
 
I have a knife that I use to cut my leather with. It was in a kit that telephone repairmen use that had a sheath and nice scissors with it. It has a grippy handle with a hollow ground wharncliffe blade. I reprofiled/sharpened it with my Wicked Edge WE130. I strop it good before and after I use it. I just make sure that it will push cut printer paper after I strop it. It push cuts the printer paper like a razor.

Leather Knife-2a.jpg
 
So for us newbies…if stropping results in a dulling of the apex, can adjusting pressure and angle “resharpen” it, or do we need to take it back to the stones to fix it?
 
T Twindog
Does this apply when using a dry leather strop with no polishing compound?

I think I strop with light/medium pressure, at whatever the edge angle is.
Mainly to remove any "oops" wire edge I may have developed, or to maintain a working edge between sharpening sessions.
I've never applied compounds to my strops.
 
afishhunter said:
T Twindog
Does this apply when using a dry leather strop with no polishing compound?

I think I strop with light/medium pressure, at whatever the edge angle is.
Mainly to remove any "oops" wire edge I may have developed, or to maintain a working edge between sharpening sessions.
I've never applied compounds to my strops.
Click to expand...

I always use a diamond paste to give the strop a little kick. I'm not trying to straighten an edge, but refine its apex. Diamonds help.

I strop only after I've fully removed the burr with stones -- usually with very short, very light, edge-leading strokes at the edge angle.

Stropping really shines when you give it a clean apex and strop, as you say, with light pressure at the edge angle.
 
uansari1 said:
So for us newbies…if stropping results in a dulling of the apex, can adjusting pressure and angle “resharpen” it, or do we need to take it back to the stones to fix it?
Click to expand...

I'd have to actually look at the edge to know.
 
I alwasy set the strop angle 1.5° less than the sharpening angle. Use light pressure so the edge maintains its sharpened profile angle (doesn't round over the apex).
 
Thank you for this thread! I have also noticed times after using my ceramic rods to get secondary beveled edges to hair popping, I take it to the strop and it becomes more dull. Sometimes I can get the strop to sharpen, but not always. I have had much better luck stropping a convex edge than an angled bevel.

Also, like handamerican said, I have noticed that I can strop an edge on other materials than compound impregnated leather, including just basic cotton cloth, leather without compound, diamond tape (Edge Pro kit), etc.
 
I strop from feel , it has to feel even and smooth, I see angles automatically anymore but a lot has to do with the sound it makes it just hums at the correct vibration. I sharpen about 1500 knives a week for chefs and it becomes second nature but most of my time is not worried about stropping but putting the angle back exactly correct. I have found that chef over hone their knives although I don’t suggest honing but periodically doing whet stones at 6000/8000 instead by the time I get them they have no angle left and won’t even cut butter. I first get the angle back. And may go whet stones from 220 to 12000 then hone with diamond compound. If your using a mounted strop you can see the angle. If your using a belt or machine strop you feel and hear it. But the final answer if you put it back in the chefs knife case and he tosses it on his car seat and the knives just cut right through it. You did it right. As funny as it sounds I have had that happen more than once. But would suggest doing it by angle first and getting used to the feel and sound and with many it just is second nature. But doing it for a living stropping correctly saves a lot of time and money because finer stones are very expensive. Several hundred dollars in fact. But if that’s difficult and no matter what you can’t get the angle right or get the feel or hear it. You can for about 300 dollars buy a 100,000 grit stone if your sharpening all the time. No shame in that. Just do what is best for you. I would never say everyone has to do it the same way. There are means around every problem. You can even get stones up to one million grit. But why
 
David Mary said:
So is sharpening your full time job?
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I have a full time shop. Do about 1500 a week. Sharpening brings in more than sales of new knives but also have a Master blade maker in Seki Japan to make very difficult blades primarily for professional chefs who order Honyaki blades of various types and as they are so difficult to make have the expectation that chefs bring them back for maintenance because they may ruin them so it they buy a custom knife I do upkeep and maintenance free for life. But it yes it is
 
Awesome! I did a random guess and figured you must be going through a knife every couple minutes.
 
AhHaa..... It all make perfect sense now... I had taught myself to drag with a lower angle than sharpened, using a little pressure to let the soft leather nap come up just to the apex of the edge.
 
David Mary said:
I'd have to actually look at the edge to know.
Click to expand...
I'm running into this myself as well. As I don't have a feel for freehand stropping I figured I could mount my blade back in my Blitz360 and use the Alder/1u strop to bring something back to razor. Truth told I've yet to get razor sharp on anything I've sharpened, which appears to be because of my stropping. I have the TSProf leather and white Dialux and an Alder strop with 1u Gunny Juice. I'm pretty sure I'm still using too much pressure and rolling the apex on finishing with the leather. I thought that wasn't going to be possible with the wood but that appears wrong as well.
This is technique I just need to work on. On my first set of sharpenings I stepped up the angle of the strop 17 deg sharpeneing that was finished at about 16 deg with the leather strop. Looked good, sliced paper but didn't push cut well.

My bigger more difficult question is, is it possible to put a blade back in a guided sharpener and find the stropping angle to retouch up without borking it. I've tried using a sharpie and I can find the angle at which it hits the whole mark in one swipe. But due to the above technique I'm probably rolling the apex that much more. On the blitz there is a micro adj for the strop thickness, I'll try backing it down 1 click (effectively .5mm they say). When i have done this previously the angle never seemed to get finished by the strop. Or I just assumed it would have been pretty good in 5 passes a side. I'm now seeing 20 to 30 passes a side very lightly is not uncommon.

I figured Alder was fairly hard and it currently does give fantastic looking results, as long as I only look at the chrome finish and not try to shave. I'm going to pick up some basswood from HL down the street probably later today and lap out another strop. The Dialux is 2u so I figure I should be able to get decent results and I have a brick of that to work with rather than using up the pretty expensive Gunny.
 
Many, many, many years ago I met up with a fellow on the forums WrayH WrayH while he hasn't been seen on here for a long time now, last time back in 2007, I remember that we talked about knives, of course! and sharpening as he wanted to know what/how I did my sharpening and what was used to do a strop on the final edge. He was a very kind person and passionate about sharpening. He laid claim that he found the cardboard from one of the tissue boxes, where you pop out an ellipse of carboard, had an abrasive property that when used as a strop, laid on a table, it brought an edge to a super keen edge. Kind of ironic that a tissue box would be abrasive ;) but I tried it and found that it does do some very small edge sharpening. Now, I don't pretend to remember just which box of tissues it was, but I've used some cut up portions of the cardboard from Tim Hortons K-cup boxes to some extent recently and you can feel a little bit of a difference. Since the cardboard is flat on a hard surface it doesn't tend to roll the edge as on leather might.

I've not heard from Wray for a very long time, I do hope that he is doing well wherever he may be.

G2
 
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