Thread: Stropping leathers and Razor harm

Well, seriously, I've thought about messing with diatomaceous earth and plaster of Paris, to see if there's any good honing lurking in those microscopic silicate skeletons. Mix 'em together, hope for an even suspension, find the right balance of plaster to diatoms. There it is, my million-dollar idea.

Horsetails also generate pretty beefy silicate crystals (so much so that pioneers called them Scouring Rush, and used them like Scotch-brite pads), as do grasses. About a year ago a thread turned silly with botanical speculations. Stropping on corn leaves, that sort of thing. I'm not sure, but I probably played some part in that.

These are a bit more like garnets, but they still leave an edge a bit too harsh for my tastes. I have tried 'developing' a slurry, but they only evolve to greater angularity and even harsher edges result.

I'm telling you, the vacuum chamber is the way to go for uber-refinements.

Originally Posted by roughkype

Well, seriously, I've thought about messing with diatomaceous earth and plaster of Paris, to see if there's any good honing lurking in those microscopic silicate skeletons. Mix 'em together, hope for an even suspension, find the right balance of plaster to diatoms. There it is, my million-dollar idea.

Horsetails also generate pretty beefy silicate crystals (so much so that pioneers called them Scouring Rush, and used them like Scotch-brite pads), as do grasses. About a year ago a thread turned silly with botanical speculations. Stropping on corn leaves, that sort of thing. I'm not sure, but I probably played some part in that.

I never saw that...but I used to frequent bushcraft discussion groups, and being an obsessive honer/sharpener, I am always looking for new (to me) aways to work steel.

We had several interesting discussions regarding sharpening without conventional means. There are some pretty serious abrasives growing out there. One of my preferred methods was stropping on creek mud on a green cedar branch (after stripping the bark). Stropping on sawgrass works well also, but thankfully there is not much of it around here. Cat tails work also, but I don't like getting wet in the bush

Originally Posted by ScoutHikerDad

So are we gonna have a thread on various pollen slurries now? Maybe pollen pastes for strops?

On a serious note, how do you make pollen slurry?

Originally Posted by Sunbird

On a serious note, how do you make pollen slurry?

Drizzle honey on the hood of a black car, then swirl it around.

When I tried that, all I got was ants.

Ants = contamination. Their mandibles will wreck your edge (they measure several thousand microns across).

This is a reason I espouse the vacuum stropping methods.

Well, I didn't strop on them. Sheesh.

Gentlemen, I'll let you in on a secret. The best pollen to use in a pollen slurry is that of a prickly pear cactus blossom. The backstory is as follows:

My grandfather was born in Oklahoma. At the age of 8 his father died suddenly, making him the man of the house. He had his mother and three sisters to "look after" at such a ripe young age (though later on in his early teen years he truly would be the one looking after them), forcing him to quit school and take up working ranches. As he grew, his duties increased with his employers, and soon he was driving cattle through the various states in our own midwest. In short, he became a real cowboy.

By the age of 21, in April of that year, he was living in Texas, driving cattle and doing the things normal young men do at that age. It just so happened that he met an old Chickasaw Indian and the two became good friends.

Now, the Chickasaw had migrated to Texas in the 1830's, settling near Nacogdoches. They were some of the most prosperous of the Indian nations, leading to some of them owning slaves. Those who did so sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War, however, after the war, the Chickasaw territory became a crossroads to the cattle drives, hence, how my grandfather and his friend came to meet.

I recall my grandfather telling me a story about how one morning, after a particularly long and rowdy night filled with loose women and whiskey, he decided he needed to clean himself up and catch a shave. His razor, however was not in the best condition it could have been, so he pulled out his hone and began to sharpen the blade. After a few minutes had passed, he was interrupted by fits of laughter from his Chickasaw friend, who was claiming he was doing things all wrong. Gramps responded with "Well, if it's so wrong, Mr. know-it-all, then how should I be doing it?" to which his friend's response was simply "Prickly Pear".

After a few head scratching moments, the Chickasaw man took my grandfather by the hand and led him to a patch of Prickly Pear Cacti that were in full bloom, since it was in April. His friend began to pick the blossoms and shake the pollen out into his hand, gathering the pollen from 30 or so blossoms.

He then spit in his hand and mixed the pollen in to form a somewhat thick paste, which he then spread onto the surface of my grandfather's hone. Reaching for my grandfather's back pocket, he pulled out the last of the bottle of whiskey from the night previous and proceeded to sprinkle just a bit onto the hone to thin out the paste. Doing so created a fine yellow slurry, that seemed to make the light hitting it shimmer like the slurry was made of polished bronze.

He instructed my grandfather to make several passes (less than 10 according to what he could recall) and said that the blade should be sharper than he'd ever experienced.

Needless to say, my grandfather kept a bottle of whiskey in his workshop and a Prickly Pear Cactus growing right outside for the rest of his days. The only substitute he ever found to be close was pollen from Georgia Pine trees when he moved here, combined with his saliva and gin rather than whiskey.