Yet another strop question.

CrimsonTideShooter

CrimsonTideShooter

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Oct 23, 2010
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I have the bark river black and green compound on the way, it will no doubt be a huge improvement over the green compound I got from lowes.

My question has two parts:

I just thought of this, am I micro convexing my V edges when I am stropping? I have never seen my stropped edges under a microscope so I have no clue. Although it seems logical that the strop is putting a quasi convex micro bevel on my V edge.

Part two, if I am convexing my edges, the black compound from BR would make this more pronounced correct? In other words, is the black coarse enough to actually change the geometry of my bevel?


Thanks to all the strop masters.
 
Theoretically you ARE very, very slightly convexing your bevel, although I doubt that in any regular stropping use you're going to be doing enough of it to be noticed at all. The black compound is fairly aggressive, but again without tremendous amounts of stropping I doubt you'll do much geometry change.
 
Cool. Thanks for the info.

Say I'm coming off of a DMT Extra Fine diasharp/and or a spyderco UF stone: should I even mess with the black? In other words, do the EF diasharp and the UF spyderco stones have a finer grit than the black compound?

Thanks a ton. I'm not sharpening ignorant, I'm just a die hard edge pro user who has recently found free hand sharpening enjoyable. :)
 
I'd give just a try with the green, myself. If that doesn't reach the goal you're after, you could always go back and use the black first. I use the green-loaded side of my strop quite a bit more than the black, for one the green 'feels' a lot better on the steel.
 
Any loaded strop is going to convex the edge, its just a question of what degree. If/when you wind up putting a strop-maintained blade back on a hard stone, you'll see with the first few passes that the bevel has indeed become somewhat convexed. Coming off a DMT EF I'd say you're still in range of the black compound - coming of the Spyderco UF you should probably go to the green.

Some of that will depend on how soft the leather is on your strop.

The black is going to do a better job of removing any last trace of burr and maintaining a bit of microserration - the green is going to polish that right away. The black can be used to bring an edge back from a bit of wear, something the green is not so good at. For maintenance they work well as a team, used individually you'll have to experiment a bit to see how they fit with different grinding media.
 
I would suggest the use of green compound, on balsa rather than leather. Leather is near ideal for convex edges, but IME, balsa is superior for the "V" grind.
 
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