I use their 1200 grit Clover compound on a leather strop.
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What is your "go-to" strop compound for burr removal?
- Thread starter Strauss95
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For more ductile or 'bendy' burrs on mid-range stainless steels, the bar/stick compounds in aluminum oxide work well. And for very heavy, thick burrs on those same types of steels, using those compounds on something like hard-backed denim or linen will very aggressively remove those heavy burrs, while doing a lot of polishing as well. It works much more aggressively, because the fabric will hold a much denser application of compound - it's very fast in metal removal. When I had trouble with steels like those, that combination seemed the most effective and easiest solution in the short term. Think of steels like 420HC, AUS-6/8, VG10, ATS-34, etc. - these steels at low to moderately high hardness (HRC 55-59) can form and hold some very tenacious & stiff burrs that won't respond to stropping without an aggressive compound of some kind.
I'd still say the best way is to reduce & thin the burrs as much as you can on the stones first. That's still possible with steels I mentioned above - it's just a matter of getting more familiar with how those burrs behave and being more patient and thinning them further with a lighter finishing touch on the stones, to remove those burrs or at least reduce them to a level they're not significant anymore, i.e., they'll immediately strip away with the first cut in anything.
Other steels that aren't as ductile, or those at higher hardness of HRC 60+ usually won't be as stubborn in burr removal - their burrs will tend to break away on their own once they're thinned adequately on the stones. This is why I tend to view harder & more wear-resistant steels as (usually) easier to sharpen & deburr than will be some of the softer, low-alloy stainless stuff. So long as they're fully apexed on the stones, the harder & high-wear steels will tend to strop clean much more easily on a bare strop of leather, or denim or whatever. For those steels, use compound if you want more polish. But otherwise, you shouldn't necessarily need a compound for just deburring.
Steels that are extremely hard, like mid-60s HRC, might even be difficult because they tend not to hold a burr at all. For that reason, it's sometimes challenging to know for certain when the edge is fully apexed, because the indicator (the burr) is never seen or detected before it crumbles away. ZDP-189 is a steel known for this, as it's usually hardened well into the 60s HRC.
I'd still say the best way is to reduce & thin the burrs as much as you can on the stones first. That's still possible with steels I mentioned above - it's just a matter of getting more familiar with how those burrs behave and being more patient and thinning them further with a lighter finishing touch on the stones, to remove those burrs or at least reduce them to a level they're not significant anymore, i.e., they'll immediately strip away with the first cut in anything.
Other steels that aren't as ductile, or those at higher hardness of HRC 60+ usually won't be as stubborn in burr removal - their burrs will tend to break away on their own once they're thinned adequately on the stones. This is why I tend to view harder & more wear-resistant steels as (usually) easier to sharpen & deburr than will be some of the softer, low-alloy stainless stuff. So long as they're fully apexed on the stones, the harder & high-wear steels will tend to strop clean much more easily on a bare strop of leather, or denim or whatever. For those steels, use compound if you want more polish. But otherwise, you shouldn't necessarily need a compound for just deburring.
Steels that are extremely hard, like mid-60s HRC, might even be difficult because they tend not to hold a burr at all. For that reason, it's sometimes challenging to know for certain when the edge is fully apexed, because the indicator (the burr) is never seen or detected before it crumbles away. ZDP-189 is a steel known for this, as it's usually hardened well into the 60s HRC.
Complete burr removal is what I struggle with the most sharpening freehand on bench stones. I can apex and generate a burr no problem, but getting rid of the burr without just flipping it from side to side has proven difficult, especially on the cheap soft steels. All part of the learning process I suppose.
UncleBoots
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Yeah, it never gets fun. Best approach: banish cheap soft stainless steel from your life. Next best: diamonds and patience.
I've successfully banished it from my own inventory, but it's on nearly every knife I sharpen for others!
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Another thing about soft stainless steels is, because the steel (and therefore its burrs) is so ductile & bendy, it can be work-hardened for a while on something like a smooth steel honing rod or on a strop. That work-hardening happens by bending the thin edge back & forth many times during the realigning on the steel or the strop. It's the same sort of thing that happens to a piece of wire that gets bent back & forth many times (and the metal gets hot at the bend while doing that). The metal will seem to get much stronger at the bend, making it harder to bend back & forth. But eventually, with more bending back & forth, the wire will weaken and then break.
Up to a point, work-hardening of the blade's fine edge will seem to strengthen the edge a little bit - and that's when the benefits of stropping or steeling can be seen. But the more work-hardened it gets, the more brittle and/or unstable it eventually becomes. When that happens, the edge will move around and roll kind of unpredictably and degrade cutting results. The one way to fix that is to reset a new edge by grinding the unstable, work-hardened steel off. The new steel left behind will then be more stable again.
Up to a point, work-hardening of the blade's fine edge will seem to strengthen the edge a little bit - and that's when the benefits of stropping or steeling can be seen. But the more work-hardened it gets, the more brittle and/or unstable it eventually becomes. When that happens, the edge will move around and roll kind of unpredictably and degrade cutting results. The one way to fix that is to reset a new edge by grinding the unstable, work-hardened steel off. The new steel left behind will then be more stable again.
One thing I do is to increase the angle of the knife the do ver light circular strokes before moving to my next stone. For striping I will use whatever compound I have. For the super steals I will use a diamond waxe I bought from griomatic. It has been a while since I have had to use it.
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If you don't even want to think about the concept of burr minimization, then I recommend using black buffing compound on one of those poplar S4S cuts you can get at home depot. The poplar is soft and porous enough to take compound easily, but also hard enough that you can remove even arguably unreasonably large burrs extremely easily. Then you can repeat the process using the other side and some green compound for a shiny mirror if you want. Its very fast because the substrate is so hard compared to leather, and you also don't have to worry about rounding your apex... and its also dirt cheap
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Burr removal is done on stones exclusively, I don't use strops for anything as they don't do anything better than stones except perhaps you can get very fine grits that are beyond what come in stones. They do have a large number of drawbacks that completely eliminate their use for me, which are unavoidable. Spending some time on a roughly 1000 grit waterstone with light pressure will largely minimize a burr to the point where it's simply a matter of then switching to a very hard bond stone and using light edge forward passes alternating sides at the finish grit level of your choice. A minute or so and you have a very sharp micro bevel even at very high grit apex.
I would argue that you cannot completely deburr a knife on stones. Yes, you may get rid of large burrs that you can't feel with your fingers, but that's not the whole story. There's still a tiny burr that can only be seen at extremely high magnification (like SEM high).
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If that is in fact the truth (I do not doubt this) does it present any real world problems if it is minimized to the point of being undetectable short of SEM?
I think it depends on how you define problem.
If you're not obsessive and you just want a sharp knife, it's not a problem. But if you're like me, and you want the sharpest edge you can possibly produce ... then it is a problem. In my case, the best result I've gotten coming straight off stones--doing everything I can do to minimize the burr--is a BESS score of 120. That's pretty sharp. In my experience it's about 60% sharper than the average factory edge. BUT ... I can typically get it at least 25-50% sharper than that with a few minutes of careful stropping.
But I guess the real answer is that it's a rabbit hole problem and not so much a real world problem.
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I look at 'deburring' simply as reducing the burr to a point it becomes insignificant in any practical use I might conceive for the knife. And past a certain point of reducing it, whatever burr is left will be so fragile as to be stripped away in the first one or two cuts anyway. All the burr reduction I need to do can be done on a stone, to a point where I can see it isn't interfering with the cutting tests I do in fine paper, with 'success' meaning no snagging, hesitation or slipping in the cut, and behaving that way consistently in successive cuts (indicating stability of the finished edge). I don't rely on feeling it with my fingers or seeing it - both my fingers and my eyes are too old for that anyway. Any stropping I might do after that is basically just brushing away the weakest, flimsy remnants of it.
I think it's basically moot to expect any edge to be absolutely burr-free. Most any hair-whittling edge on an EDC knife, even if technically clean & free of burrs, would still likely be too fragile to be durably sharp in real-world use - effectively as weak as the burr itself, if subjected to anything except shaving.
I think it's basically moot to expect any edge to be absolutely burr-free. Most any hair-whittling edge on an EDC knife, even if technically clean & free of burrs, would still likely be too fragile to be durably sharp in real-world use - effectively as weak as the burr itself, if subjected to anything except shaving.
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