stropping compounds?

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nc527

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Mar 22, 2009
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I bought some red and white compound today for knife stropping. Which is finer, and how should i strop my knives with thease 2 compounds?
 
I've never heard of using red for stropping, it may be too soft for steel, use the white.
 
You can apply them to some leather, cardboard, or even post-it notes. Some people like to stretch the leather tight over wood. I prefer using the linen side of a razor strop, which you could duplicate with denim stretched over a 2x4.

I don't know about the hardnesses of the pastes, but would be interested in your results!
 
Where did you get it and what brand?

Red is usually to soft and only used by jeweler for gold, silver, brass and copper. It also will not polish as well as white or green compound.
 
Red rouge (Iron Oxide) will polish the blade, it just doesn't cut as fast as chrome oxide (green) or alumina (white).
But its fine particle size makes it a good choice for really mirror-like polishing....it just takes more effort since it doesn't cut as fast.

BTW, any compound which produces a dark or black mark on the strop when you draw the blade across is cutting metal...that's what the black is. :)
 
cj65 said:
I am a huge Flitz fan for removing rust, and cleaning blades. I never thought of trying it as a strop compound. Thanks, I am gonna try it!
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Your welcome Ive been using it for many years. I also like to make strops from old quality leather belts, I find at the goodwill etc.


Peace
Steel Talon:cool:
 
The white might be all you need, but the red has worked great for me with M2, 440C, and N690 and didn't do too much for S30V.
 
Steel Talon said:
Your welcome Ive been using it for many years. I also like to make strops from old quality leather belts, I find at the goodwill etc.


Peace
Steel Talon:cool:
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My first attempt at strop making was from a leather belt at thrift stores. It was fun to try, but the leather started cracking and shredding, did not get a good enough one to do it right. So, now I use the Hand American Leather found at fine wood working stores. Wood workers are serious about their edges... I keep my Flitz next to my computer!
 
cj65 said:
I am a huge Flitz fan for removing rust, and cleaning blades. I never thought of trying it as a strop compound. Thanks, I am gonna try it!
Click to expand...

I use flitz on my stops. It's always worked really well.
 
The red rouge has worked well for me on simple carbon steel blades and lower carbon stainless. On the harder stainless the white is pretty good. I like diamond grit for steels with large carbides like D2. To my mind, the more abrasion resistant the steel the harder I want the strop and the harder I want the stropping compound.
 
nc527 said:
I bought some red and white compound today for knife stropping. Which is finer, and how should i strop my knives with thease 2 compounds?
Click to expand...

I use white on the rough side of my strop and red on the smooth. They both work great.

Despite the replies here, I wouldn't recommend Flitz. Flitz is a CHEMICAL polishing compound rather than an abrasive one; meaning that the polishing work is being done by solvents rather than abrasives. HOWEVER, Flitz DOES contain a mild abrasive, but it's only there to loosen the material that's already being removed chemically.

Now, if you use Flitz on a strop, the solvent vehicle (like the smelly stuff in glue or markers that dries up) will evaporate leaving the chemical polishing agent useless, and leaving behind only the mild abrasive that was meant to work with the chemical - but that mild abrasive that's left is so mild that it's really not as good as if you were to use something that's meant to be an abrasive to begin with.

That white and red you have is great. Get the strop conditioner to wet and soften the strop and put the red or white on top of that.

Use the white if you're new to this; the red is very fine and only good if you're super-anal and want a (literally) hair-splitting edge. (But the red is only good as an upgrade after you're good enough to put a really hair-popping shaving edge on your knife.)

.
 
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