Thread: paste hone equvilent

Originally Posted by mparker762

I think the wood just doesn't hold as much paste as the leather, so it's cutting slower. I've got a theory as to why the edge seems stronger as well, but I'm not sure how to test it.

Just a thought, but perhaps you should try cleaning your leather before applying the paste? I recall reading before that there was some testing done (pretty informal mind you) that showed that a freshly pasted and cleaned leather strop worked better and produced more crisp edges. If I recall correctly, this was due in part to most people just reapplying the CrO over the original paste and the existing paste before is "contaminated" with small metal pieces from previous sharpening sessions. This may account for your findings (or at least present another variable to consider) since the freshly pasted wood would be void of metal bits.

If you want to test for this alone, then I may suggest stropping using loaded newsprint. I've had good success pasting some newsprint with CrO, then using either on a flat table top or on top of a leather paddle strop so I don't have to clean it afterwards.

I've noticed this on pasted clean strops and on repastes. Similarly fresh-pasted wood and repasted wood behaves the same. It's possible that there are flavors of leather (HA red latigo is a possibility) that would hold less paste and behave similarly to the bare wood, but then you may as well have gone with the bare wood and saved yourself the cost of the leather.