Thread: Knife stropping

The Case, my buddy did on his Ken Onion Work Sharp. The other two are factory I believe.

Ok. I am assuming you are not loading the strop ( diamond spray or paste or whatever)

If so, it's unlikely to work, at least for kitchen knives. I would also recommend against it.

It's unlikely to work as I suspect the edge angle is too wide and rough.

It not recommended because if you reduce the angle you edge will not take kindly to being smacked on the board. See rolled edges.

I will try to get some pics up of the strop RedTruck, if you have a buffer or spindles to put on a drive motor, ebay has the paper wheel/compound sharpeners that kick azz on dull knives, they were about $20 and shipping, boy do they work slick and Fast, be dang careful though.

Originally Posted by Rami

Ok. I am assuming you are not loading the strop ( diamond spray or paste or whatever)

If so, it's unlikely to work, at least for kitchen knives. I would also recommend against it.

no not loading the strop. My buddy did use green paste on his strop on the Case knife.

Originally Posted by redtruck

I was wondering if stropping a knife is the same as stropping a razor? In that I mean do you lay the spine on the strop, or do you need to match the grind of the knife. I have stropped a few kitchen knives, but they seam about the same or a little duller then when I started. I used the "razor technique" where you lay the spine down then roll it at the end of each pass
Red

Different. Knives bevel angles are not predefined as with razors. So when yo strop you have to hold the knife at angles consistent with the bevel angle, whatever it is.

For stropping knives, large paddle strops, leather glued to a MDF base work well, as does Sail Cloth, Polyester Canvas with paste, or a honing jig for smaller knives, I like the Edge Pro.

As said you do have to hold the knife flat on the bevel, larger knives are easier to free hand because of the larger bevels.

Do be careful with grinders, you can waste a lot of knife with those quickly. You can get good result with an inexpensive clamp on edge guide and stone. Finish at 1k for most kitchen work.

It is my understanding from some of the knife sharpening sites that you strop the blade angle, which is basically the same that is going on when you strop a razor, you are still hitting the cutting edge.

I use a bench strop. As for how I hold the knife it depends on the bevel. When I reprofile the bevel the bevel is flat so for that I match the angle, but with free hand sharpening after awhile the bevel tends to become convex. After that I hold it pretty close the edge with a little pressure so it follows the convex to get the edge. Sounds confusing how I wrote it, but hopefully it makes sense.

Hanging strop for razors, bench strop for knives in my case. With razors, slack controls the angle, with knives angle of the blade as held controls the angle. So for knives, plywood is cut to a desired dimension and vegetable tanned leather is cut to fit and applied to the plywood with double-sided cold-press adhesive (obtainable in a decent art-supply store). Four-five pads are placed on the underside of the plywood to lift it off the bench--then strop away! Vegetable-tanned belting leather can also be sanded to 120x-180x to gain some tooth for loading with a pasted abrasive.