Favorite Strop

[Doc Dan]

Lapping film

[Dazen]

I’ve been using the Knives Plus strop with good results.

https://www.knivesplus.com/strop-block.html

You can get it on Amazon as well.

[dull&blunt]

My favorite strops are all made by myself.

I ordered vegetable tanned leather belt blanks from a leather store online for like $15. It gave me enough leather for 5-6 dual sided strops. Glued the leather to a piece of wood and called it a day.

Compound goes on the hard leather, the rough side is used without compound and really only for burr removal. I use Venev compound, 3micron. But most any reputable diamond compounds will produce good results.

[tcarltonw]

I use homemade bat strops with cowhide leather from the local Tandy, smooth side always, with gunny diamond emulsion. I've cleaned them once with saddle soap and microfiber clothes and reloaded them. Don't have anything to compare them to but I know the end product is laser beams. Good luck with your hunt sir.

[bbturbodad]

I like this piece of basswood I bought at a local craft store. I've rounded the the edges slightly and use them for serrated blades.

[Max E Met]

This year I started making my own strops out of 3-4mm veg tanned leather. I make them 12 in Long 3 in wide, smooth side and buckskin side.

I learned a trick from a friend that I've never done before. I was almost exclusively using the smooth side of the leather. Always going for a fine mirror finish. A friend told me to use the rough side of the strop with a 600 grit diamond paste. I have to tell you it was eye-opening for me. It could be maxamet, cruwear or 15v, it didn't matter, just a few passes on each side and the blade was scary sharp.

I have some Buffalo hide coming next week. I have never tried it before. They say that the Buffalo has more silicates in it than cowhide does. I will be putting it to the test. I love experimenting on different things. I will post back if I notice a difference between the two.

[hambone56rx]

I like this piece of basswood I bought at a local craft store. I've rounded the the edges slightly and use them for serrated blades.

Fascinating! Why do you like this rather than leather?

Hamilton

[Erion929]

Fascinating! Why do you like this rather than leather?

Hamilton

For ME, as I wrote in a post on Pg.1, with the softer leather I would be inconsistent and often press too hard trying to strop the blade metal instead of letting the medium (the compound) do the work. I could tell sometimes I rolled the edge by pressing too hard.

I switched to diamond paste and wood and find it easier to keep light pressure only on the harder wood….letting the diamond paste work.
.

[northvanbamboo]

I've tried many strops, soft fluffy leather with aluminum oxide green compound, hard skin with spray on ceramic compound, paint mixing sticks with diamond compounds, nothing works as good as the stropping book I made. Pages are labeled with their respective grits and use blank pages to clean the blade after stropping. Initially i sharpen knives on low grit stones without stropping, once the front end sharpness wears off i move on to the strop, gets every knife super sharp again

[jwbnyc]

Now, that’s interesting.

[JD Spydo]

I currently have 3 different strops. But the one I really like is one made of Russian Boar Hide which I got from a Barber Supply vendor.

A place I like to go to get my compounds is JapanWoodWorker.com. Them and Lee Valley seem to both have great selections.

Here lately though I've been using my German made F. Dick Smooth Poliron smooth sharpening steel. Learning new techniques It seems like stropping has really gotten popular again in the past 2 to 3 years.