Stropping question

pvicenzi

pvicenzi

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Dec 25, 2008
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First, I am new to stropping. Now, my problem: When I strope most of my knives using green compound after sharpening on an eight thousand grit DMT stone, I get good results. However, when I take my S30V Sebenza To the strop, it gets duller? h
 
There are plenty of tutorials out there, just look at Bark River or KSF. What's your strop like, how much compound, and what's your angle.
Too much pressure will round the edge.
Another thing to consider, your edge has a wire burr, and feels like it's biting into your fingertips, right? Then you strop it, and now that burr is gone, and it feels more dull. How dull? Will it shave hair? I have some that are stropped, won't shave hair, but are great cutters.
Check out some more stropping tutorials, you'll figure out what's what.
 
foxx said:
There are plenty of tutorials out there, just look at Bark River or KSF. What's your strop like, how much compound, and what's your angle.
Too much pressure will round the edge.
Another thing to consider, your edge has a wire burr, and feels like it's biting into your fingertips, right? Then you strop it, and now that burr is gone, and it feels more dull. How dull? Will it shave hair? I have some that are stropped, won't shave hair, but are great cutters.
Check out some more stropping tutorials, you'll figure out what's what.
Click to expand...

Yep I get the same thing - sometimes it's difficult for me to tell it's sharp at all because the edge is polished.

I've also found that with particular knives I have to raise the spine considerably but use extremely light pressure to get the best results.
 
I am fairly a newbie resharpener, but my added question would be what kind of grind are you stropping? Are convexed edges the only edges that get stropped? If you strop a flat bevel, do you end up convexing it?? For myself it took several hours of working different knives (on different days :P) to learn how to keep a knife sharp after "getting close". And if you stropg on a belt sander with leather then it will only take a pass or MAYBE 2 to remove the wire edge and make it SHARP, slicing through paper, push cutting paracord like nothing, shaving hair, and equally batoning fir. If my knife will do that, I'm happy :) I think most important is to avoid pressure and realize that less is more with stropping :)
 
This is a timely thread for me, as I've been experiencing the exact same problem as the OP. I have very good results on all my other knives using my current stropping technique which I am still new at, but for whatever reason I think I am actually dulling my CRK knives. Of course they were sharper out of the box than any other knife I've owned. I will try lighter pressure.
 
I noticed something similar, when stropping with green compound on S30V (specifically on a Sebenza and on a ZT-0350). Not sure if my edges got duller, but I don't think they got substantially sharper, either.

I've started using Simichrome latey, as a stropping paste. Noticed right away, it produced a significant difference. It occurred to me, the abrasive in the Simichrome is aluminum oxide (which is at least a little harder than the chromium oxide in the green compound), and the aluminum oxide particles are larger (I think it's usually around 3 to 10 microns or so), than the green stuff (which is around 0.5 microns). So, it makes sense to me, that the larger and harder abrasive particles of the aluminum oxide would be more effective, especially on a very abrasion-resistant steel like S30V. I haven't yet tried diamond for stropping, but I'd assume it's much more effective also.

Edit:
S30V is known for losing a 'hair whittling' edge quickly, but leaving behind a toothy edge (due to very large carbides) which lasts a very long time as a 'working edge'.
 
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Vanadium carbides should be harder than Chromium Oxide. I would try diamond paste or spray for that one. Though truthfully, stropping high carbide steels might be a waste of time since it will eventually develop a "toothy" edge, with some steels losing their razor sharpness with only a few cuts. I believe higher hardness helps in that regard, but S30V at Rc 57-59 isn't exactly good as a shaving razor.
 
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