stropping?

Z

zach2556

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So I made a post to find out how to learn to sharpen and where to get a nice sharpening stone and blah blah blah not important. But somone posted saying to have a peice of leather to "strop".... I have no idea what this is, what it does, how to do it, and so forth. So please let me know how to do this and what it does for my blade. Thanks!!




-Zach
 
You can purchase a piece of tooling leather in say a 2-3" wide strip and say maybe 10-12" inches long and load it with some white rouge. After you sharpen your blade and form a burr on one side, you drag the side of the blade with the burr along the piece of leather at say maybe the same exact angle you sharpened the blade at. What the strop and white rouge does is break the burr off that has formed while sharpening therefore polishing the edge to get it scary sharp. Obviously if the angle is too high, you can actually end up dulling the blade in the process too !

You can also use an old leather belt.
 
What is white rouge? And I have an old leather jacket I was just gonna cut up and use. And where can I get white rouge?
 
Leu Custom said:
You can purchase a piece of tooling leather in say a 2-3" wide strip and say maybe 10-12" inches long and load it with some white rouge. After you sharpen your blade and form a burr on one side, you drag the side of the blade with the burr along the piece of leather at say maybe the same exact angle you sharpened the blade at. What the strop and white rouge does is break the burr off that has formed while sharpening therefore polishing the edge to get it scary sharp. Obviously if the angle is too high, you can actually end up dulling the blade in the process too !

You can also use an old leather belt.
Click to expand...

Yes and no, When you are finishing up with your stones you should try and reduce the burr as much as possible, a large burr can damage a strop. Stropping with compound is just like sharpening but at a much finer level. To get the best results you must finish on a very fine stone, 8000 grit would work well for this. The burr does not break off it gets polished away because the polish compound is removing the metal.

When you strop (edge trailing) you are basicaly refining all the large scratches that the stone left behind. Always try and strop at the same angle or slightly lower than your sharpening angle, leather has some give to it so the wrong angle and too much pressure can turn your edge into a high polished butter knife.

When you sharpen each progressively higher grit stone reduces the thickness of the cutting edge making it sharper. The strop just takes it to the next level, the compound you use also makes a difference. I like diamond compounds because they cut any steel and produce sharper edges than standard bar compounds.

Here is a short vid of stropping, two way are shown, tip to choil and choil to tip.
http://s284.photobucket.com/albums/ll20/knifenut1013/?action=view&current=Picture322.flv

Here is a pic of a edge after a 8000 mesh diamond hone.
looking down on the edge at 200x
PIC046.jpg


Same edge after stropping, this pic actually shows that the edge needed more stropping and that my last few strokes did not hit the edge. You can see the compound line just before the edge, the line before the edge that reflects like a rainbow is the excess diamond compound.
looking down at 400x
PIC048.jpg
 
knifenut1013 said:
Yes and no, When you are finishing up with your stones you should try and reduce the burr as much as possible, a large burr can damage a strop. Stropping with compound is just like sharpening but at a much finer level. To get the best results you must finish on a very fine stone, 8000 grit would work well for this. The burr does not break off it gets polished away because the polish compound is removing the metal.

When you strop (edge trailing) you are basicaly refining all the large scratches that the stone left behind. Always try and strop at the same angle or slightly lower than your sharpening angle, leather has some give to it so the wrong angle and too much pressure can turn your edge into a high polished butter knife.

When you sharpen each progressively higher grit stone reduces the thickness of the cutting edge making it sharper. The strop just takes it to the next level, the compound you use also makes a difference. I like diamond compounds because they cut any steel and produce sharper edges than standard bar compounds.

Here is a short vid of stropping, two way are shown, tip to choil and choil to tip.
http://s284.photobucket.com/albums/ll20/knifenut1013/?action=view&current=Picture322.flv

Here is a pic of a edge after a 8000 mesh diamond hone.
looking down on the edge at 200x
PIC046.jpg


Same edge after stropping, this pic actually shows that the edge needed more stropping and that my last few strokes did not hit the edge. You can see the compound line just before the edge, the line before the edge that reflects like a rainbow is the excess diamond compound.
looking down at 400x
PIC048.jpg
Click to expand...

Yeah ! What he said !

I would not use a leather jacket. Too thin of material.
 
zach2556 said:
What is white rouge? And I have an old leather jacket I was just gonna cut up and use. And where can I get white rouge?
Click to expand...

white rouge is a buffing compound that is used on ferrous metals to polish them up. You can use other kinds of compounds as well. I suggest the white rouge because you can find it at any hardware store.

Depending on how many sharpening stones you have and how fine they are will determine on how sharp you can get the knife.

I don't sharpen my knives in this manner (with a stone) and I use a buffer with 400 grit compound that makes all the blades razor sharp. The buffer with the compound removes any burrs formed from the grinder as I take my blades straight to the cutting edge with no secondary bevel.
 
I don't sharpen my knives in this manner (with a stone) and I use a buffer with 400 grit compound that makes all the blades razor sharp. The buffer with the compound removes any burrs formed from the grinder as I take my blades straight to the cutting edge with no secondary bevel.
Click to expand...

What kind of wheel do you use for this?

I have been playing around with stropping at higher grits and the results are surpising.
 
Stropping is a tough cookie, no doubt about that.

If you're like me and you like to go for the "best" of everything, I would suggest going for the diamond pastes with them strops.

This site should have most of what you're looking for:
http://www.classicshaving.com/Razor_Strops_Hones.html

This one offers a nice little leather bench strop and DMT Dia-Paste(quality stuff IMO):
http://www.sharpeningsupplies.com/Strops-C11.aspx

Oh, and as a little hint, do NOT try to go for the cheap "diamond" pastes on eBay. I doubt those are anything more than food coloring, water, and corn starch. Average price for a decent quality diamond paste syringe would be about $10+ for 2 grams and $15+ for 5 grams. Rule of thumb: If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Green and White Rouge are good for removing burrs and microserrations. The Green Rouge is specifically used for stainless steel and is more "aggressive" than the White(so use green first, then white). However, I'm reasonably certain that these buffing compounds are relatively low "grit", and should simply be used to hone the edge of your knife rather than try to put a hair popping edge on it.

Red Rouge supposedly doesn't cut, but I believe it still puts a nice shine on the edge, and can simply be used to align or straighten the edge slightly.

If you're a maniac however and would like to go for the ultimate edge, go for sub-micron abrasives. Anything below 0.25 microns would likely be a waste of time, as most knives won't be able to take and hold an edge that fine(you'd need a knife with HRC 60+).
 
Stropping is a tough cookie, no doubt about that.

If you're like me and you like to go for the "best" of everything, I would suggest going for the diamond pastes with them strops.

This site should have most of what you're looking for:
http://www.classicshaving.com/Razor_Strops_Hones.html

This one offers a nice little leather bench strop and DMT Dia-Paste(quality stuff IMO):
http://www.sharpeningsupplies.com/Strops-C11.aspx

Oh, and as a little hint, do NOT try to go for the cheap "diamond" pastes on eBay. I doubt those are anything more than food coloring, water, and corn starch. Average price for a decent quality diamond paste syringe would be about $10+ for 2 grams and $15+ for 5 grams. Rule of thumb: If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Green and White Rouge are good for removing burrs and microserrations. The Green Rouge is specifically used for stainless steel and is more "aggressive" than the White(so use green first, then white). However, I'm reasonably certain that these buffing compounds are relatively low "grit", and should simply be used to hone the edge of your knife rather than try to put a hair popping edge on it.

Red Rouge supposedly doesn't cut, but I believe it still puts a nice shine on the edge, and can simply be used to align or straighten the edge slightly.

If you're a maniac however and would like to go for the ultimate edge, go for sub-micron abrasives. Anything below 0.25 microns would likely be a waste of time, as most knives won't be able to take and hold an edge that fine(you'd need a knife with HRC 60+).
 
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