Your Minimum Strops

Eli Chaps

Eli Chaps

Joined
Apr 20, 2018
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FIRST: I recognize stropping is controversial. I strop and this is a discussion about stropping components, not about stropping vs. not stropping. Not trying be a jerk off the bat, just don't want the thread derailed with a stropping debate is all. :)

Hello Sharpeners,

I really appreciated the input on the Four Stone Bench Kit thread. Coming back to freehanding and never really having a proper teacher during all those years, your insights and recommendations are greatly appreciated. I've already made my first purchase based on a recommendation in that thread to go along with what I already own and will update as I test stones and such for my applications.

That said, I would very much like to know, what would be your minimum strop types and media. I'm not putting a number on this as I'm not really sure how many people think are a minimum here. Again, we're talking all steels and knife types from 8Cr to S110V and pocket to kitchen.

What do you think are the essentials and best general purpose bases and media? Brands, grits, etc.?

Thank you in advance!
 
1 um diamond spray on leather.

If I could only have the minimum that would be all.

I have 10um, 5um, 1um, 0.5um, 0.25um, 0.10um and 0.025um.

But 1um is all I use.

Kenneth's Schwartzs diamond spray is a favorite, very aggressive.

Hand American spray is nice if you can find it.

I buy a local brand at a culinary knife store.
 
Diamond spray or compound on whatever medium you prefer, be it news paper on glass or expensive leather. I currently use denim from old jeans stretched onto some flat wood blocks with diamond paste.

Green compound works fine on softer non super steels.
 
Three strops are enough for anything other than 'Bragging Rights.'

0.5mic Green Chromium Oxide on any very firm substrate (compressed leather, MDF board, basswood, etc.)
0.5mic Diamond paste, in case of the newer, harder steels (bought from Gem Polishing Supply companies) on any firm substrate. If it's good enough to polish valuable diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, it's good enough to strop an edge. No need to spend a fortune on this stuff. It's as common as dirt.
You may wish to go to a finer grit, but you really wouldn't notice the difference in every day cutting situations.

Finish with Shell Cordovan Horsehide used without any compounds.


Stitchawl
 
This could turn into a longish list, but if we're talking about essentials the base for me is a coarse benchstone (or Washboard) and a sheet of paper.

Apply mud from whatever stone you happen to be using if its is vitreous or waterstone to the sheet of paper. If waterstone mud let the paper dry a bit, if oil let the oil migrate into the paper so the reclaimed grit has very little mobility. Wrap around coarse stone and use that. A more durable strop can be made from a dollar bill. This method works very well with SiC benchstones in particular and can literally make a tree-topping edge using just the one strop and a combination stone.

For high Vanadium I prefer diamond in the 6-10 micron range.

Being the second such discussion re the bare minimum gear to cover everything, diamond or CbN has to feature prominently, though I do not find it to perform as well as conventional abrasives on carbon or low alloy stainless.
 
I only use 1 micron diamond paste on two media: basswood, or leather. I use the basswood strop as a final deburring step on pretty much any knife. I use the leather strop for the same thing, but on full convex grinds.
 
For my razor it's the green rouge on very smooth leather. For all my other knives I have a rough strop and a smooth. The rough has SiC grit
which started out around 250 grit. For the smooth I used reclaimed grit off a fine SiC Norton, probably around 600 grit. I don't strop my vanadium steels. I just
work them on the stone. DM
 
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For me personally, it is green stick compound on firm leather, and 1 micron diamond spray on balsa wood. That covers the knives I own. I have no idea what would be required for that full spectrum of steels you laid out.
 
Thanks all.

Right now I have a suede and a hard leather strop. The suede one is loaded with CrO and both see a lot of use. But as I've said before, I primarily own low-alloy steels across all my knife platforms and my higher-alloy steels I've been putting on my KME. I'm working toward being able to sharpen and maintain whatever steel comes my way all free hand so these threads really do help me stay focused on the essentials and gauge my thoughts against all of yours.
 
My minimum would be a 4 um CBN on wood and a 1 um diamond on wood. My preference is to use a harder stropping surface to help avoid rounding off the edge apex. I find this leads to much cleaner, better apexed edges for me.
 
...never met a strop I didn't hate....had a bunch of different ones, and balsa and diamond paste and the pictures and lingo and technical details...and the finished blade is always more dull than when I started.
Now, when I finish an edge...perhaps on a 1000 grit...I just "tape" one of the 4000 or 6000 grit tapes from Edge Pro on top of the 1000 grit stone in my Edge Pro and finish it that way...with gentle strokes. Occasionally, I like to use some Flitz right on top of the last stone...used Mothers and others, but Flitz has worked wonders for me in polishing trigger systems in handguns for years.
As long as I can push-cut Yellow Pages, I'm happy. Never worried about tree-topping hairs...although that's fine for some folks.
 
My 'minimum' stropping boils down to what HH mentioned earlier, just a sheet of paper laid bare over a bench stone. More often lately than not, if I can accomplish what I want that way, that's all I need. Sometimes I'll follow with stropping on the sueded side of a leather belt, just to clean up any loose remnants left from the stone work.

I don't strop with compound much anymore, UNLESS I specifically want more polish. For specific uses, like cutting cardboard, a polished, thin convex works real well to reduce binding in heavy materials that pinch the blade. A hard-backed denim strop or firm wood works well for that, with a compound appropriate to the steel type (aluminum oxide for simpler, mid-range steels, and diamond on wood for higher-vanadium steels).
 
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Green and gray compound on hard leather for me. I've gone through CBN, diamond sprays and compounds, wood, and leather and that's what I've settled on. I know how to get the results I want with it so I stick with it these days.
 
Russian Red leather on hard wood. CBN or Diamond paste in 2, 1 and .5 micron.

For braggin' rights, I also use .25 and .1 diamond
 
Piece of paper laid over the edge of a desk. If I have compound handy, it's even better but that's not always the case.
 
For me, it's homemade strops using (the larger size, slightly cut down) paint sticks from HD or Lowes, wrapped with a single layer of thin denim from old jeans. For compound, my favorite is Ryobi "H" white compound (discontinued but still available on the big auction site and maybe elsewhere). It seems a bit more aggressive than the green chromium oxide Bark River compound which I had previously used (and still use occasionally for a very fine finish). I also have a denim-on-paint stick strop with Mother's Mag applied, and as you can imagine, it's good for when you want to shine up an edge. Finally, I have one bare denim paint stick strop which can be helpful in cleaning up any remaining micro burrs. I also have a couple of different types of strop with 1 micron diamond compound, but since the vast majority of my knives are of softer steels, I don't use them much.

In addition, I have some "traditional" paddle strops---leather on beautiful wood---and they definitely cost a lot more than my virtually free homemade ones. But they don't work nearly as well for me and I have way too much tendency to slightly round the edges with them. That said, they do work fine for the purpose for which I originally bought them---Bark River fixed blades with full convex grinds.

If I had to pick just two strops, it would be the one with Ryobi "H" and the bare denim one. Ninety percent of the time, I'm using just these two or else the Ryobi "H" one by itself.

I became aware of the simple, cheap, and effective denim-on-paint stick strops, along with the Ryobi "H" compound, several years ago from David (Obsessed with Edges) and decided to give them a try. It looks like he may've moved on from there and strops less in general, but this still works well for me.

Andrew
 
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Old belt cut & applied on an old Lansky stone. Green paste. Of course I've never tried the Mothers polish. Interesting.
 
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