Yet another stropping question...

HeavyHanded

HeavyHanded

Joined
Jun 4, 2010
Messages
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Hello all, looking for individual opinions based on the following.

I just gave the full treatment to my long-suffering Crawford Casper folder - that is :
Washita Arkansas establishing bevel approx 22 degrees

Soft Arkansas primary bevel approx 27 degrees

Hard Arkansas same bevel as Soft

Resulting edge just dry shaved a day's worth of stubble from jawline and cheeks with only a hint of pull on some of the jawline whiskers. It'll whittle hair but not pass a hanging-hair test.

Am debating whether to strop this puppy, and what the likelihood is of going backward using Brill Razorcut yellow compound on a vegetable dyed cow-leather strop. In my experience with the stuff, its comparable to the alum ox usually provided with muslin buffing wheels (I have both). Coming off the Hard Arkansas, am I now in the territory of the more selective grades of compound? In the past if I wanted to improve on this edge I'd use other stones, notably a Coticule. Use of the compounds currently at my disposal usually results in a step backward. I have sub-micron diamond lapping compound, but cannot vouch for it being free of contaminants and so I no longer use it. From my description, is this poor technique or insufficient materials?
Thanks for the feedback!
HH
 
Correction, I'm using Flexcut Gold yellow compound. Brill Razorcut is what I use on my reel mower! Works great, but it's 220grit SiC!
 
Of course I couldn't sit tight for a response, and so...resulting edge cleanly picked off the remaining 1 thousandth or so of hair that was left on my face. Part of my problems with stropping is that I have no easy metrics to measure edge improvement/refinement when it gets to this point. My thumb-O-meter maxes out just shy of my Hard Arkansas edge (take a guess what grit that might be). Just about any other test I can devise that doesn't involve human hair fails to show a performance change one way or the other. Looks like I'm going to have to get more creative with my experimentation.
 
Not much to add to the other parts of your post, but don't worry about the hanging hair test, that is a very hit or miss test that can easily give false results (in either direction).. if it shaves w/out tugging or irritation you are probably pretty well dialed in.
 
Absolute pushcutting- the kind where you don't slice at all, using thin phonebook paper is how I know my edge is right. This generally coincides with tree topping, only it's an even better test.
 
grizzled gizzard said:
Absolute pushcutting- the kind where you don't slice at all, using thin phonebook paper is how I know my edge is right. This generally coincides with tree topping, only it's an even better test.
Click to expand...

Along the grain, across the grain, or diagonally? Letting the cut portion flop over as I cut, or moving fast enough that it stands up from start to finish? What should the moisture content in the paper be? The more paper testing I do the less reliable it seems to be as a measure of "sharpness". Going with the grain I can pushcut through fine newsprint (Grainger catalog stock) at 80 grit, including the start providing the bevel is fairly acute. Going straight across the grain, not a chance. My real question was just how much of an improvement I should see with stropping when the edge is already worked to a pretty fine degree, at what point do I need to switch to the better grades of compound, and is stropping even needed or helpful if one's finishing stone is extremely fine or is stropping just a matter of convenience? I get good results stropping up to about a 1500-2000 grit edge (using my current compound) and I can easily improve on this by switching to a finer stone instead of stropping. When I use any of my finer stones, the Aluminum Oxide and Flexcut seem to do very little if anything. Technique or tools?
 
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