Thread: Skin as strop

Once I met Ed Fowler knife maker extraordinaire while buying a knife from him at a show 10 years ago (Pronghorn). His outlook on maintenance of a knife was funny and influenced me. When I asked him what to use to keep the blade from corrosion, he rubbed his nose and said nose grease works well. When I asked him about stropping, he replied that skin is a good strop in the field. Ed is definitely a "knife user" kind of guy, which influenced me a lot.

most of the time now after stropping a finished blade, I finish stropping it on skin after leather. Large blade on my upper thigh (ahm, need to be in shorts), small blades on my palm. This has always given me superlative refinement of the edge it seems. When stropping on my palm I can feel the smoothing of the edge as I strop. Works well for me on razors too.

Does anyone here do the same? (havent cut a main artery as of yet..knock on wood)


PS (shoot..wrong section of forum..sorry..im learnin)