David, what size do you make your strops to?
HH, same question.
Most of my stones are 2"x8", some are 2x6 or smaller. I do all my stropping on paper of some sort, frequently wrapped around whatever stone I'm using, so my strops are the same size as my stones. If I had some premium horsehide and was to use it only for finishing with no compound, I'd still cut it to size with my stones, and when I used to use leather I held them to 2x8 boards with two-sided tape. For a time I had 3.5" x 20" strops and sanding belts glued to boards for sharpening larger blades, but have since figured out how to do the biggies on a small stone.
Speaking to the leather nap question here's what I have found - the 'suede' or muscle side of the leather is suitable only for very large grit abrasive stropping, 220-320 or so, and here it excels. Even then it should be sanded or stoned very tight. Abrasive needs some pressure to work, and its critical that amount of pressure be less than what will deflect the leather to any measurable degree. If not, one will need to change the angle of the blade using mostly intuition to compensate. It can be done for sure, and many get acceptable results anyway, but many more will experience rounding of the apex or difficulty going from convex to V grind to FFG etc. The more firm the strop the greater the margin of error for pressure, and the smaller the margin for holding the angle consistently. My prediction is that as you progress you will seek out harder and harder leather for stropping. When I speak of scraping and scuffing leather for better performance I'm talking about the smooth side of the leather and for the most part leather thats close to being cuir boulli (boiled leather) - nearly as hard as a piece of wood.
One can get good results with softer leather, or using the rough side, but it takes much more care with the amount of pressure and the technique gets further away from the normal motor control and muscle memory one employs for most of their sharpening. Something that can be managed in a very workman-like manner becomes a process so finicky that not only is every single pass absolutely critical, its also very limited in what sort of work it can do. Makes it very difficult to employ for indefinite maintenance. Consider the popularity of backhoning on waterstones - a tricky skill to master and possibly even less forgiving of pressure and angle variations than 'stropping' on nearly any other surface, but rewards the user with an indefinite method of keeping their edge at exactly the same level of sharpness and cutting qualities.
Another thing to keep in mind as I bloviate, I generally don't use my strops as a final handful of delicate passes after much careful stone work. Normally I go up to 600-800 grit maximum on stones, and frequently far lower. The fine side of a Crystalon stone is rated at 280 grit I think, and the fine India stone about 320. Yet if a refined edge is what I'm shooting for, that's what I make, not simply a coarse edge well-finished, but worked down to a far finer edge. I remove a fair amount of steel with my stropping. My concerns re firmness of the strop, ability to manage removal of larger amounts of metal and more frequent loading are not universal. However, these are still common concerns, just a question of degree.
HH
