Will an unloaded strop take off a burr or wire edge?

J

Jamesh Bond

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Jan 14, 2007
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Curious and pondering, so I'll ask.

I always hear about stropping to remove a burr or wire, but I can only get rid of mine on stones. The stropping just refines the crisp edge for me. I use plain leather, cardboard, jeans, hand, etc.

So, does this removal practice require a loaded strop? Or there a concept or technique I'm not familiar with that would make this possible with a plain medium?

Thx.
 
If the burr or wire is left fine enough, i.e., very thin & fragile, after the stone work, almost anything can take it off. Bare leather, jeans, wood, or even slicing into a single thickness of paper can sometimes do it. I've also had them break off onto my fingertip when feel-testing the edge for the burr.

A loaded strop or more stone work might be needed for heavier burrs, which can be recognized by their strong resistance to a thumbnail, or they'll often scrape material off of the strop itself and collect it behind the burr on the edge, like dirt under a fingernail. When burrs are stiff enough to behave like that, it usually requires some more aggressive abrasion (compounded strop or stone work) to remove them.

It basically comes down to how far you go on the stone. If you've done some heavy grinding on the stone and noticed you've raised a big & heavy burr, you can either reduce the size/thickness of it on the stone with more strokes at a much lighter touch, leaving it thin & delicate enough to easily remove it. Or, you can immediately switch to stropping, which likely won't remove it when it's that heavy, without the use of some appropriately aggressive compound.


David
 
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I dont strop until im done with my fine stones. I usually make sure there is no burr left before stroping. I have a fine and ultra fine ceramic hones/ sharpeners. I will use a stroping motion with them. Then the first strop i use is dry rough leather. Then dry smooth leather with diamond paste.
 
I have had it remove extremely small ones left over from powered sharpening. Generally I find it does nothing for a burr that is readily visible.

I have had luck with paper removing slightly larger ones, but not without a lot of pressure (paper wrapped around a coarse stone or Washboard). In that case there is some bona fide burnishing going on.
 
It's always best to reduce the burr on the stone as much as possible and whatever you can't get with the stone you can clean up with the strop. Burrs get very small and unless the steel is of high hardness getting them completely removed on the stone can be a very tedious process.
 
I've never tried this, but I once heard that a bare horsehide leather strop would be the final step in a sharpening process if someone wanted to take it to the umpteenth degree. Kindly bear in mind that I only read this somewhere in my travels. Once again, I have never tried this.
 
Horse leather is some of the best and used a lot in hanging strops. Horse, Kangaroo, and cow are your three main sources of strop leather.
 
Back when my technique wasn't as good as it is today, I thought I was deburring properly on stones. I couldn't detect the burr any more, so I thought it was probably gone. Then I started doing a tiny bit of stropping after my coarse stones. I had only been deburring on the coarse stone and then moving to the next finest stone. When I added no more than 5 passes per side on a strop, after a coarse stone, an amazing thing happened: My blades were really sharp after only the coarse stone! I couldn't believe it. I was stunned. Hair shaving (not super clean, but it did it) from a coarse DMT.

Now I'm able to produce edges like that, straight from the stone. I think there were probably little pieces of thin burr folded back and forth over my edge, making it catch paper and not shave hair very well. Stropping just a very few times probably removed those little "burr pieces" and left behind the clean edge I was after.

I did these initial "ah ha" experiments with a loaded strop. I'll bet the loaded strop works better than a bare one, but a bare strop might work too. It's probably a matter of technique and the level of burr that's left that you are trying to remove.

Brian.
 
I can use my Spyderco Sage to cut up some cardboard and general light work in a days time. Come home and give her about a dozen or so passes on my homemade strop which is loaded with the green oxide compound, and she's ready for the next day.

Here's my little tidbit on how to make a strop. I make my ElCheapo strops by gluing a couple of 5 gallon paint stir sticks together. I usually use leather about 10" long so I'll have to cut the rig to length. Sand the edges down and make them user friendly. I may or may not stain the rig. I use contact cement to glue the leather down. Then after everything is dry and ready, I pull out the ol ladies hair dryer. I heat up the leather as well as the compound. After they both get pretty warm I go to town. I keep the hair dryer on and in one had and the compound stick in the other. Actually, prolly took me longer to describe the technique than do it.
When the rig loads up with metal and turns black, clean it with the 99 cent mechanics hand soap. Use hot water to rinse. Let it dry for a day and reapply. Good as new.
 
Kootaga13 said:
I can use my Spyderco Sage to cut up some cardboard and general light work in a days time. Come home and give her about a dozen or so passes on my homemade strop which is loaded with the green oxide compound, and she's ready for the next day.

Here's my little tidbit on how to make a strop. I make my ElCheapo strops by gluing a couple of 5 gallon paint stir sticks together. I usually use leather about 10" long so I'll have to cut the rig to length. Sand the edges down and make them user friendly. I may or may not stain the rig. I use contact cement to glue the leather down. Then after everything is dry and ready, I pull out the ol ladies hair dryer. I heat up the leather as well as the compound. After they both get pretty warm I go to town. I keep the hair dryer on and in one had and the compound stick in the other. Actually, prolly took me longer to describe the technique than do it.
When the rig loads up with metal and turns black, clean it with the 99 cent mechanics hand soap. Use hot water to rinse. Let it dry for a day and reapply. Good as new.[/QUOTE
I don't find chromic oxide has much effect on S30V except maybe a little burnishing.


Russ
Click to expand...
 
Thx for the responses guys.

Just to clarify, I'm not asking how to remove burrs, or other stropping type stuff.

I just wondered if the burr removal on strops I'm always reading about was taking place on plain strops.

I have always gone with doing it on stones. I've tried it on my uploaded strops just to see, and it never had any effect.

I really have a complicated way with conveying simple thoughts.
 
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