"Best" compound for leather strop?

[Cozzer]

Just as the question.
In the UK, there's red, there's green....apart from the obvious, is there a difference?!

 

[Blackswanwood]

Yes, they vary in coarseness. I use green for carving tools, chisels and plane blades.

https://www.cooksongold.com/downloads/files/Polishing-Compound-Chart.pdf

 

[mrpercysnodgrass]

silverline do a good range of buffing soaps.

https://www.silverlinetools.com/en-GB/Product/ProductDetail?ModelName=107874

 

[Cobbs]

I only ever use Autosol metal polish, bought a tube about 20 years ago and it's still going. Leaves a lovely edge.

 

[Fitzroy]

Yes, they vary in coarseness. I use green for carving tools, chisels and plane blades.

https://www.cooksongold.com/downloads/files/Polishing-Compound-Chart.pdf

what I take from that chart is don't use red in the work-shop only the jewelry-shop.

 

[Jacob]

Autosol, or any metal polish is good.

 

[RobNichols]

Personnally, I've put leather on both sides of my strop and use green on one side and red (rouge) on the other. Green is my general go to stropping compound but when I really want to push the boat out, I'll flip the strop over and give some strokes on the red side after the green.

Recently I've started using carving tools more and made up a second strop with yellow compound on one side and pink on the other. If I've got an old gouge that needs more than a simple buff up of the edge, I'll work through the compounds (Yellow -> Green -> Pink -> Red) the same way I would go through the grits with sharpening stones. The advantage with the compounds being that I can apply them to leather and bend the leather around formers to match the gouge profile.

I also found this Axminster chart useful: