Which leather strop to get?

DLT Trading sells strops and Bark River Compounds that take well to their leather. Virtuovice on Youtube has many videos showing pros and cons of various strop brands and difference between compound colors/grits.
 
+1 for Knivesplus strop block. I just got mine last week and it is great!
 
Just got my knivesplus loaded strop. Took my tenacious up to super fine on the Lansky tested on paper. Then stropped it, tested on paper, I can definately tell a difference. I think it's worth the $20. What sucks is they charge $8 for shipping.
 
Buying a strop is like buying any other quality product and, for me, I want to know as much about it as i can to make a informed purchase.

A leather strop can be one of many types of leather and can vary due to thickness, surface texture, processing method, and how hard or soft the leather is. Some is better for compound or select types of compounds while others such as horse hide is best used bare.

Using various types of compounds on leather, wood, or other types of strop bases is much like using a very fine sharpening stone. Using the proper sized compound following your last stone will continue the progression of "grit" removing the previous scratch pattern until around 1 micron where the scratch pattern becomes too small for the human eye to see, AKA mirror finish. However, if you jump to far say straight to green chromium oxide @ 50,000 grit the abrasive is too small to remove the previous scratches giving inconsistent results and a greater likelihood to round the apex of the edge.

If simple stropping to give the final touch in sharpening is all that's needed I would highly recommend a felt de-burr block and either standard or hard rolled horse hide leather from HandAmerican.

If you would like to find the sharpest of sharp with a mesmerizing level of polish use harder strops with compound and pay attention to the micron rations of the abrasives you are sharpening with. Beyond that its a lot of trial and error.
 
Is stropping with abrasives different from stropping with just leather? I thought the original idea behind stropping was to realign the indentations in the edge of the blade without removing metal. Has it morphed into sharpening with the use of abrasives?
 
postoak said:
Is stropping with abrasives different from stropping with just leather? I thought the original idea behind stropping was to realign the indentations in the edge of the blade without removing metal. Has it morphed into sharpening with the use of abrasives?
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It's both. Just depends how much TLC an edge needs. With compound, there will be some metal removal, although very minimal (so long as the 'compound' is the usual variety; some folks here like to 'strop' with some very coarse compounds on occasion). Otherwise, on bare leather, it's mostly about removing burrs (breaking them off), or realigning an edge.

I suspect some real purists might refer to leather on hard backing with compound, as a 'leather hone'. But mostly, we just refer to it as stropping. ;)
 
Bare leather has natural silicates in it that is the abrasive action seen when using bare leather. They can be as small as .001 microns IIRC and have the highest concentration in horse hide. The reason for using compound on leather is to control the grit size and speed up the process, with experience you might eventually view putting compound on leather or certain types of leather "disrespectful" or wasting the leather. I said "yeah sure" when I heard that too but its now my view also.

All stropping removes metal, re-alignment is typically a process of deformation induced by another hard object ie. A honing steel.
 
postoak said:
Thank you Obsessed with Edges and knifenut1013. Both very informative posts.
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Glad to help. :thumbup:

Welcome to the forum. Your username's a good one. I used to live in central TX, near Austin. Had a few of those on my property. Solid, tough, hearty trees. :)
 
knifenut1013 said:
Bare leather has natural silicates in it that is the abrasive action seen when using bare leather. They can be as small as .001 microns IIRC and have the highest concentration in horse hide.
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Is there any reference material for this? I did some snooping around and couldn't find anything re natural silicates in horsehide specifically. I have no doubt that there are, but silicate is naturally found in connective tissue in all animals and many plants (which boast the highest concentrations). Linen is a good example of a high-silicate material. Animals excrete any extra silicate that isn't being taken up. I can see where grass-fed critters might have higher levels than grain fed (maybe), but why would horses have the most?

Also, silicates are used heavily in the tanning process by many suppliers, wouldn't this more than make up for any naturally occurring silicates? I know there's so much silica in many papers that it becomes a problem in some recycling processes.

I'd really appreciate some source material to look at on this subject.
 
I would imagine that if it is true that silicates are found naturally forming in animals (connective tissue) it would follow that animals with Large masses of extremely muscular tissue (connective tissue) a Horse (especially a Horses A$$) would have a nice concentration of silicate formation.
 
Stitchawl would be the one to ask. He has been the main source of info on the subject.

I did not know tanning added silicates, that could very well explain the random large scratches I sometimes see from bare stropping. As I understand it the grass feeding combined with the methods of tanning is how the abrasive qualities are "brought forth"

Horse hide is known in general to the best of stropping leather and has been the choice for barber hanging strops for a minute. It's higher concentration of abrasive particles it easily seen in direct comparison to a cow hide strop and will produce obscene levels of sharpness with diamond compound speed. But! If you slack on the stone work a bare strop will do very little. (HH, I don't foresee you having a issue with that)

It's also not something you need a lot of. If I find myself doing more than 25 laps per side I know the stone work needs to continue.
 
Does anybody have any opions on using suede as a strop? I ask because that's exactly what I've been doing for a few months. I used a 3" guitar strap that I no longer needed, which I cut into two strops. I've been charging it with green compound and stropping, which favorable results. I have no real point of reference, however, as this is my first strop.
 
Mud Shrimp Moe said:
Does anybody have any opions on using suede as a strop? I ask because that's exactly what I've been doing for a few months. I used a 3" guitar strap that I no longer needed, which I cut into two strops. I've been charging it with green compound and stropping, which favorable results. I have no real point of reference, however, as this is my first strop.
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Used with compound, suede should be fine. For polishing an edge with compound, it might even be great. Not sure how effective it would be without compound. I read a little about suede leather a while back, and I think the process used to make suede might strip a lot of the natural silicates from the leather. So it might not be as effective bare, as compared to other stropping leather. Having said that, if you're getting good results, that's all that matters. As for having a point of reference, I would still encourage you to try as many different things as you can.
 
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