Making my own benchstrops

Hi,

I have 5 pieces of glass (each exactly 7cmX25cmX1,5cm or 2,75"x9,84"x0,59" to our forum members living in the USA, Burma or Liberia) that I want to make into benchstrops for using with diamond pastes, jewellers rouge, crox and cerium oxide.

Each will receive rubber feet, so as not to get out of place while in use.

Now, I have the following question: what should I use as the stroping medium? Leather, Micropore surgical tape, denim, felt ? What are the pros and cons of each? The idea is to get completely free of stones.

I'll glue the medium to the pieces of glass (so the glass will serve as a perfectly flat base for whatever I use as the stroping medium).

You might want to read THIS THREAD that's developing now and get in on the experimentation since you're planning on exploring a similar technique and using similar materials.

If your intention is to use pastes in lieu of hones from start to finish, then you'll need to back hone rather than edge lead with the materials you've listed. You can't hone edge leading using denim, leather, balsa, most other woods for obvious reasons.

I've tried bevel setting with grease based from 300 grit equivalent up to 1k on glass. Bad results so far.

For polishing/finishing an edge using fine grit pastes any of those materials you've mentioned work well. I like denim, but not as a final finisher. For a final finisher, I prefer balsa or leather.

Chris L