The Secret of Leather Honing - Handamerican

[pahl]

Thanks to Handamerican.com secret of leather honing web page I have gone from putting a good shaving edge on my knife (Spyderco Ayoob) to putting a hair popping shaving edge.

With the same knive befor stropping the correct way I had to slice a 3/8" rope to cut it.

After stopping the correct way I can now push cut the 3/8 rope with very, very little pressure.

This is the part of the page that really helped me out.

Finding The Correct Honing Angle:

It's very easy to find the right honing angle for knives, chisels, plane irons, etc. With knives, simply lay the blade flat on the leather. Using the weight of the blade slowly push along the leather with the edge leading while raising the back of the blade in very slight increments. The moment the edge bites, not cuts, into the surface of the leather you have found the appropriate honing angle. Stop, reverse direction, pulling the blade along the leather with the edge following. Do this several times on one side and repeat the process on the other.

For now I'm just using a leather hone I made myself.
Think I'm going to order one of handamerican Arkansas Stones/Leather Hone Combination.

Just when I thought I was getting my knives sharp I learn something new

Wonder if I can get them even sharper??

 

[knifenerd]

I got into stropping a few months ago and I know, it's an eye-opener. I got the Lee Valley double-sided strop--very similar to your (nice) homemade one. I did it because it was the only way I knew to maintain the convex final edge on my 'Benza. Since then I've been stopping everything I can get my hands on.

BTW, the link to Lee Valley is: www.leevalley.com

 

[Cliff Stamp]

You can also use a marker on the edge to get angle settings, same as you would on a hone. The marker of course requires that you lift the blade off to check, which is a drawback and can't be done constantly as you can with the above method. However, if you use this method (edge bite) on a dulled edge which you are trying to sharpen with the SiC compound, you will tend to increase the edge angle, and thus overtime with frequent sharpenings the profile will thicken significantly.

-Cliff