Stropping Compoud Question

[Binalith]

I am making a wood block and leather strop or hone (still not sure where the distinction lies, if I'm using compound I'm essentially sharpening and I always thought a hone was that rough steel rod in the kitchen knife block and honing did not remove any steel). Anyway I found this green and white 'polishing compound' at lowes for 3 bucks each. It's the right stuff...right? Thanks.



As a side note, my main goal for this strop right now is to get my new SwampRat RMD up to shaving sharp, it came pretty damn sharp, but with a rather thick edge that doesn't waste as readily as I'd like. I will likely thin it down a bit but for now I want to see what some heavy stropping will do. I know that the red or black compound removes more steel but I wasn't sure I wanted to go that far. Seems like from what I've read that green and white tend to be peoples preference for general purpose blade maintenance.

 

[marcinek]

Those will work. Chrome oxide and black emery are the common green and black sticks of copmpound you see sold.

That said, no compound on a strop is going to remove much metal. Black emery will remove a tiny, tiny, tiny bit...anything less coarse will just polish.

 

[X_shooter]

I always considered honing the last part of sharpening using the finest stone and then stropping as the last step to polish the final edge. All sharpening and eventially polishing will remove metal. It just goes faster with courser stones. You will notice that the label says polishing compound. That stuff will work fine. if you want to thin the edge as you call it you are reprofiling and you should use a coarse sharpening system to do that especially to remove a lot of metal. Polishing it down without mechanical assistance just using compound may discourage you.

There are a lot of experts that will offer the finer points of my general advice and might tell you that you need no compound at all or some compound to get that perfect edge. I have tried it both ways and like the results of the green compound on my strop and sometimes follow up with bare leather.

 

[Brisket]

It's going to take you a very long time to thin out that thick edge stropping with those compounds. Without going the powered route or investing a lot in other means that would make faster work of it, you might want to consider getting wet/dry sandpaper and use a trailing edge stropping strokes over leather surface or mouse pad progressing from course to fine grit as you go and then finish up with the compound loaded leather strops. Use the search function to glean more information on this and other methods to reprofile an edge.

 

[Binalith]

Thanks for the advice guys, much appreciated. I am aware that re-profiling is not done by stropping, I'm just wanting to build a strop for general use and to see what, if anything, it will do to improve the edge extant on the RMD as a first step before I commit to a re-profile.
and thanks to whoever moved this thread, I'm pretty new and didn't even realize this maintenance section existed.

 

[Obsessed with Edges]

I am making a wood block and leather strop or hone (still not sure where the distinction lies, if I'm using compound I'm essentially sharpening and I always thought a hone was that rough steel rod in the kitchen knife block and honing did not remove any steel). Anyway I found this green and white 'polishing compound' at lowes for 3 bucks each. It's the right stuff...right? Thanks.
(...)
As a side note, my main goal for this strop right now is to get my new SwampRat RMD up to shaving sharp, it came pretty damn sharp, but with a rather thick edge that doesn't waste as readily as I'd like. I will likely thin it down a bit but for now I want to see what some heavy stropping will do. I know that the red or black compound removes more steel but I wasn't sure I wanted to go that far. Seems like from what I've read that green and white tend to be peoples preference for general purpose blade maintenance.

As others have said, stropping alone might not help much, especially if the edge angle is wide (heavy stropping would likely make it rounder/wider/duller). If, at some point down the road, you do decide to thin the edge on stones, following up with black -> white -> green is a popular sequence for knife blades. Don't bother with red; it's iron oxide, and really is only meant for softer metals. It wouldn't be very effective on hardened knife steel.


David