Use/purchase of a Strop

H

HeadKicker

Joined
Jun 16, 2006
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183
I have heard mention of finishing or sharpening a Busse with a strop. I am considering purchasing one. Any advice as to how useful they are and which one I should buy. Thank you in advance,
 
Very useful! Just about any strop with a hard backing will do. Ideally you want to place it on a table - I fix it down with a little bluetac. That way you can use both hands on the knife for more control.

Have you got a leather belt? Try the back of that. I still use one even though I've got other strops now.

Also, get some honing or stropping compound; that makes quite a big difference.

Bark River do a good set that includes a strop and the compounds for about $40.
 
Jerry offered an adjustable (loom) strop a few years ago. Might be tough to find, but they work real nice.

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You could always just make your own strop. glue a stip of leather to a piece of wood and rub in some polishing compound. I use the white compound from Sears myself but the white or green will work fine. A strop greatly enhances your edges! :) Removal of the micro burr developed during the sharpening process will also help your edges last longer as there will no longer be a burr to roll over and make the edge seem dull.
 
JRE has a pretty good looking strop bat(four sided) and they just started offering thier convex sharpening kit too:
jreindustries.com
 
Lee Valley offers strops aswell. They are mounted on a piece of hard wood, and some are double sided if you want to use more then one type of compound. THey have a green stroping compound available but jewler's rouge works very well also. I've seen some places like Princess Auto "not sure if you guys have that store in the States" carry a multi pack of buffing compounds that include jewler's rouge aswell as others for different levels of grit and finish. Hope that helps some. BTW I know Lee Valley has a order branch in the U.S. . Some very cool Sharpening supplies. :)
 
For me strops are the best way to sharpen and maintain an edge. They don't work for when you have a damaged edge, in which case you will have to repair it with another method before returning to stropping to maintain.

My hand sharpening skills with any other method would be called handicapped at best, but with a strop, I can get hair popping sharp with very little effort. Once a knife is sharp, a minute at the end of the day brings it right back.

I stepped on one of my belt buckles in the dark last Christmas, ouch that hurt when it broke into several sharp pieces on the bottom of my bare foot. But on the up side, I had a belt to cut up and use as a strop.

easy as pie. I might make another one in a bit. A double sided one, with much wider leather for easier stropping of my longer blades. This one takes a while to strop the entire edge of my FMBLE.

They work awesome on convexed edges, but work great on regular v grind edges too.
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