advice on which leather for strop

[Trafalgar]

While a lot of people have re-purposed these buffing wheel compound sticks (if the vehicle is a fairly hard wax at room temp it's for use with buffing wheels) they are not the correct way to charge a hand strop. They just aren't. They generally result in a total coating of the leather making the leather itself irrelevant. And it's not irrelevant. A lot of people use these things and a lot of people are wrong on this.

If you can find any classical reference that advises charging a leather strop with wax or something containing wax I'd love to see it.[/quote]

It's certainly not a repurposing - LV specifically claim it's usable for hand honing. As you know, older references tend to be scanty on detail, especially detail that was considered "obvious" at the time, but I'll see what I can find.

Ah - in the midst of another "discussion" I'd already found this:

There are twelve street-sellers of razor-paste, but they seem to prefer " working" the distant suburbs, or going on country rounds, as there are often only three in London. It is still vended, I am told, to clerks, who use it to sharpen their pen-knives, but the paste, owing to the prevalence of the use of steel pens, is now atmost a superfluity, compared to what it was. It is bought also, and frequently enough in public-houses, by working-men, as a means of "setting" their razors. The venders make the paste themselves, except two, who purchase of a street-seller. The ingredients are generally fuller's earth (Id.), hog's lard (Id.), and emery powder (2<Z.). The paste is sold in boxes carried on a tray, which will close and form a sort of case, like a backgammon board. The quantity I have given will make a dozen boxes (each sold at Id.), so that the profit is Id. in the Is., for to the id. paid for ingredients must be added Id., for the cost of a dozen boxes. The paste is announced as " warranted to put an edge to a razor or penknife superior to any thing ever before offered to the public." The street-sellers offer to prove this by sharpening any gentleman's penknife on the paste spread on a piece of soldier's old belt, which sharpening, when required, they accomplish readily enough. One of these paste-sellers, I was told, had been apprenticed to a barber; another had been a cutter, the remainder are of the ordinary class of street-sellers.

Calculating that 6 men " work" the metropolis daily, taking 2s. each per day (with Is. 2d. profit), we find 187/. the amount of the street outlay.

BugBear[/quote]

What you describe is perfect -- an abrasive in a fatty/oily base which combine to form a fairly thin paste which makes it easy to charge leather correctly - which means very lightly and well-rubbed in and essentially almost invisible to the eye. The green sticks are anything but....

 

[Trafalgar]

thanks for all the comments and feedback , its good that we can have a discussion on here wthout it getting into woeld war 3 !!

some interesting ideas and techniques , peter is the leather you talk about in the shop you have provided the link too the one that says barbers strop ?

thanks mark

The product on the website is Razor Strop Leather, apologies I assure you the leather is a lot better than my Photography
The Veritas Green Honing Compound is designed to be used by hand on leather strops and the majority of students that have used it do buy it. If you are interested it's on the website.
Cheers Peter

Based on the instructions for use found on their website, the product appears to be for buffing wheels (most products in stick form are) and I'm sure it does a fine job in that context. I downloaded a copy of the PDF but can't seem to figure out how to attach it to this post.

Here's the link:

http://www.veritastools.com/Content/Assets/ProductInfo/EN/05M08.01EN.pdf

These are the instructions that accompany their .5 micron green chromium/oxide compound.

 

[bugbear]

Based on the instructions for use found on their website, the product appears to be for buffing wheels and I'm sure it does a fine job in that context. I downloaded a copy of the PDF but can't seem to figure out how to attach it to this post.

Here's the link:

http://www.veritastools.com/Content/Assets/ProductInfo/EN/05M08.01EN.pdf

From the site:

Used with a felt wheel or leather belt for power honing or with a leather strop for hand honing.

For honing specialized tools, compound can be applied to wooden forms (blocks or dowel) or shaped leather for hand honing.

Derek Cohen got good results using it for hand stropping;

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/WoodworkTe ... paste.html

BugBear

 

[Trafalgar]

Based on the instructions for use found on their website, the product appears to be for buffing wheels and I'm sure it does a fine job in that context. I downloaded a copy of the PDF but can't seem to figure out how to attach it to this post.

Here's the link:

http://www.veritastools.com/Content/Assets/ProductInfo/EN/05M08.01EN.pdf

From the site:

Used with a felt wheel or leather belt for power honing or with a leather strop for hand honing.

For honing specialized tools, compound can be applied to wooden forms (blocks or dowel) or shaped leather for hand honing.

Derek Cohen got good results using it for hand stropping;

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/WoodworkTe ... paste.html

BugBear

I'm quite sure that he did. :roll: After all, it is available through Lee Valley.

I'm not trying to take strop dressings out of your arsenal. By all means, dress your strop. Just use the right one if you're using leather. You are obviously being welcomed to believe that what works on a wheel spinning at a few thousand RPM is also perfect for hand stropping. That's unfortunate but a lot of people seem to be under the same impression.

I like the ingredients of the stick compound other than for the wax. Don't load your leather strop with wax. It makes no sense. If you need to strop at all you can get a better result from other products. Are you confusing stropping with polishing? They are not the same. One CAN be the result of the other but not necessarily. One can strop very effectively and impart no extra visible sheen at all. We are all like raccoons though, who doesn't like a little extra shine?

If you use very fine media - fine waterstones and the new ceramic hybrids then just polish on a powered wheel or with a tubed metal polish on linen or a piece of hard maple. You don't need leather at all. In that context it is entirely superfluous and out of context, and even more so when smothered in wax.

As I've said, I like AlOx powder which is dry. Carver's Yellowstone pretty much is too. Try it. Here's how to use it:

http://www.woodcarvingillustrated.com/f ... und-36904/

Suppliers are listed in the thread as well.

Get off the wax and you'll never go back.

 

[bugbear]

Could you actually be explicit on why you consider the various waxes to be poor carriers please? It's clearly something you consider so obvious, you haven't stated reasons!

BugBear

 

[Preston]

Flat piece of wood, a piece of leather, some rouge and bob's your uncle.

 

[Trafalgar]

Could you actually be explicit on why you consider the various waxes to be poor carriers please? It's clearly something you consider so obvious, you haven't stated reasons!

BugBear

First, none of this applies to anybody using very fine honing media. Stropping is completely unnecessary in this instance. Somebody wanting to polish steel to remove waterstone haze can easily accomplish this in less than five seconds on an untreated linen wheel on a power buffer or a few seconds more on a lightly treated linen hand strop.

I think I've stated very explicitly why I don't like wax-based carriers on fine leather and linen hand strops. It obscures the nature of the materials. It ruins the attributes that they bring to the table.

Sparingly applied (see the L-V instructions) wax compound on a fast buffing wheel is wonderful. It melts and exposes the "good stuff." By melting, it takes itself out of the equation. It is just a liquid hydrocarbon at that point, much like the liquid hydrocarbons found in polishes like Autosol (though unlike wax they are a liquid at room temperature).

Most people even overcharge their buffing wheels. YOU WANT THE WAX TO MELT. COMPLETELY. ESSENTIALLY AS SOON AS THE TOOL TOUCHES THE WHEEL.

On a hand strop the stuff just sits there. You are stropping on a wax block in effect. The wax is in the way. Any 'good results' are in spite of, not caused by, the product itself. The wax will not allow the strop to straighten the edge and remove rag effectively as it otherwise could. You'd be well-advised to take the wax out of the equation when stropping by hand and understand what is supposed to happen to it when power buffing. These wax products CANNOT both be the best product on power wheels and on hand strops. It defies logic. It defies physics. The wax sticks have wax because a dry abrasive would fly off the wheel essentially in a puff of smoke. Wax sticks are for power machinery. Period. Any assertion otherwise is sales puffing. They are a poor substitute for other products just as easily available for hand stropping - dry abrasives, lapidary pastes and barber stropping pastes (both in a wide range of grits), valve grinding pastes, tubed and tubbed metal and silver polishes, etc. Mineral oil and rottenstone being practically just as good a solution.

Leather contains silica and is quite a fine stropping material in its own right. Wright's Silver Cream contains microcrystalline silica and is perfectly fine for charging leather, linen (silver enthusiasts polish their collection with worn-out linen napkins), or a brown Kraft paper grocery sack or "manilla" envelope.

Polishing and stropping are not the same thing. They are not even intrinsically intertwined.

I could polish steel until the gleam burned my retina and not have properly stropped the edge.

 

[Preston]

I've had wonderful results from these strops for over 40 years and I've been using a very fine Japanese water stone for over 20 years, I still use the strop.

Judge them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from a thornbush or figs from thistles? Therefore by their fruits you shall know them.

 

[Trafalgar]

I've had wonderful results from these strops for over 40 years and I've been using a very fine Japanese water stone for over 20 years, I still use the strop.

Judge them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from a thornbush or figs from thistles? Therefore by their fruits you shall know them.

That's fantastic. I'd be very interested to know what sort of strop actual Japanese craftsmen use. And, of course, what they charge them with if anything.

 

[rxh]

Alec Tiranti sell buff hide strops and strop paste.

 

[bugbear]

Polishing and stropping are not the same thing.

Thank you for the expansion on the wax; now can you expand on the above?!

To lob you a target - polishing is just a fine abrasive carried on a cloth (Brasso for the UK-ians) stropping is just a fine abrasive carried on leather (or linen) or even paper.

What's the big difference?

BugBear

 

[Fromey]

This discussion reminds me that a simple piece of photocopy paper with a squiggle of compound on it is a fine strop when placed on a flat surface.

Another thought, the business end of all this is the microscopic edge of the blade. Could it be that the wax is in fact being melted at that fine pressure point even under hand stropping? It immediately solidifies after the edge has passed. I have no quantitative data but I'm quite sure qualitatively that stropping on leather with stick honing compound gives me a sharper edge than on untreated leather.

 

[Trafalgar]

Polishing and stropping are not the same thing.

Thank you for the expansion on the wax; now can you expand on the above?!

To lob you a target - polishing is just a fine abrasive carried on a cloth (Brasso for the UK-ians) stropping is just a fine abrasive carried on leather (or linen) or even paper.

What's the big difference?

BugBear

Stropping doesn't have anything to do with an added abrasive. Adding an abrasive to a strop is entirely optional and not always even desirable. Are you reading what I'm writing? Doesn't seem so....

 

[Lons]

Without getting into the which paste / compound to use, I've tried various bits of leather from a belt through old leather coat, armchair and thin craft leather offcuts and the best I found is a thick leather sole from a shoe repair stall. He actually gave it free.
I only occasionally strop my chisels so it's mostly for my carving tools and Ihave several sizes of dowel rod with thin leather glued on and some odd bits all used for inside of gouges.

I use white buffing soap and autosol btw.

Bob

 

[MMUK]

Have you thought about asking for an old strop at your local barber shop? That's where mine came from. It cost me a #2 all over (£4) but still cheaper than buying a new one

 

[Trafalgar]

This discussion reminds me that a simple piece of photocopy paper with a squiggle of compound on it is a fine strop when placed on a flat surface.

Another thought, the business end of all this is the microscopic edge of the blade. Could it be that the wax is in fact being melted at that fine pressure point even under hand stropping? It immediately solidifies after the edge has passed. I have no quantitative data but I'm quite sure qualitatively that stropping on leather with stick honing compound gives me a sharper edge than on untreated leather.

If you're sure of it then it really doesn't matter. I have no explanation for it. If your fine stone is finer than a black Ark and your edges are materially improved by using a strop then I'd say you weren't using your finest stone particularly effectively. Otherwise, we are, as humans, programmed to believe that when we do something, anything, that there is an outcome. If you go to the trouble to strop then you want to believe that having done so actually made a difference. If you've never experienced the strop making an edge worse (for they easily can), then this little psychological trick may be in play. If you've ever seen a good barber strop an edge then you know he didn't pick the movement up on DAY 1 of barber school. Freehanded stropping is being presented as a skill easily acquired. It in fact might be as long as it's done on a piece of leather totally loaded to the point of being obscured entirely with half-micron paste. It's hard to do much damage (or much real stropping) on such a set up. One doesn't have to look hard on these boards to find beginners that take to freehanded stropping like a duck takes to water but barely seem to have jigged honing down, certainly not even mastered. How is that? They're flustered by an Eclipse jig but have got stropping down pat? Poppycock.

I pressed too hard on my rig the other day and blunted what I know was a pretty good edge off my fine stone. It happens. If it doesn't happen occasionally to folks reading this thread then they are under the influence of something other than reality. A strop that never blunts an edge through the inattentiveness of the user simply is not functioning as a strop, but only as a polishing medium. Nothing wrong with that, but there are better ways to polish steel than transferring a waxy goo to what once was a creditable piece of leather.

This applies to some, perhaps not you: I would be angry if I had close to $300 invested in a Shapton whatchamacallit finishing stone only to find that the same strop a chap that only had a Black Ark put a demonstrably better edge on my cutter. If the strop is that efficacious then we'd basically be ending up with the same edge (since the strop is the last thing to touch it) but you'd have spent a few hundred dollars more on your stone than I did on mine. Doesn't something sound amiss in this scenario? It does to me.

If ten bucks' worth of shoe leather and half a penny's worth of compound levels the playing field that much then so be it. I don't think it does, do you? Heck, maybe it does. What a joy!

 

[bugbear]

Polishing and stropping are not the same thing.

Thank you for the expansion on the wax; now can you expand on the above?!

To lob you a target - polishing is just a fine abrasive carried on a cloth (Brasso for the UK-ians) stropping is just a fine abrasive carried on leather (or linen) or even paper.

What's the big difference?

BugBear

Stropping doesn't have anything to do with an added abrasive. Adding an abrasive to a strop is entirely optional and not always even desirable. Are you reading what I'm writing? Doesn't seem so....

I'm reading very carefully - you have never defined stropping, and you have mentioned abrasives for strops. I would (truly) welcome explicit detail as to what you believe the action of stropping is.

.
.
You strop with the lightest of pressure as the AlOx powder does all the work for you.
.
.
link to "Wood Is Good WD402 Strop Abrasive Powder, 1oz."
.
.
It should also be said that anybody using very fine media can skip stropping altogether.
.
.
other products just as easily available for hand stropping - dry abrasives, lapidary pastes and barber stropping pastes (both in a wide range of grits), valve grinding pastes, tubed and tubbed metal and silver polishes, etc. Mineral oil and rottenstone being practically just as good a solution.

Leather contains silica and is quite a fine stropping material in its own right. Wright's Silver Cream contains microcrystalline silica and is perfectly fine for charging leather...

That's an extensive list of statements about abrasives and particle sizes w.r.t. stropping, from which I infer that you view stropping as an abrasive process using fine particles (if they're not finer than your last stone you state there's no point), embedded on a slightly yielding substrate.

The only process other than abrading with successively finer grits I know of for sharpening is the type of cold forging done on a cabienet scraper by the burnisher, or by a butcher's steel on a (quite soft) knife.

How would you describe the actual action that stropping applies to the edge?

BugBear

 

[JimF.]

I'm reading very carefully - you have never defined stropping, and you have mentioned abrasives for strops. I would (truly) welcome explicit detail as to what you believe the action of stropping is.

BugBear

+1
I would be interested too. At the moment I am completely perplexed...

 

[MMUK]

I'm reading very carefully - you have never defined stropping, and you have mentioned abrasives for strops. I would (truly) welcome explicit detail as to what you believe the action of stropping is.

BugBear

We have certain members who strop, especially when someone else abrades them :mrgreen:

 

[Fromey]

I use scary sharp and currently my last paper is 3 micron (which is approximately equivalent to an 8000 water stone according to the WH website). I have some 0.2 micron paper as well and would probably not bother to strop after using that.

Also, remember that stropping is not just for after honing but is a good way to refresh a blade during use.

I understand the point you're making. I've tried my paper cutting technique after the 3 micron paper and after stropping and find (qualitatively only and possibly subjectively only) that the stropping gives a better cut. I suspect it's a combination of refining the edge through abrasion plus polishing the upper section of the blade so that the exiting material meets less resistance (so technically not cutting better just allowing the blade to move more freely through/past a substrate). If your argument that the abrading elements are embedded in wax is correct, then maybe that is why stropping works; only a few particles are present to abrade the cutting edge. Just like lightening up on the pressure one uses when sharpening in order to get an effectively finer honing.

I still seriously think it's possible that at the very small scale of the cutting edge and considering how fine a point it is, that there may be sufficient heat generated from the friction of the blade passing along the leather to temporarily melt the wax. Considering how easy it is to melt the stuff and how easy it is to make noticeable heat through friction, I see no reason why you would need thousands of RPM to get this effect.