Do you guys strop your kitchen knives?

[JayBee]

I'm curious to see how this forum feels about stropping. For the last year or so i've been finishing my sharpening progression with a dozen or so passes on a piece of leather with some green compound (I don't know the relative micron scale it corresponds to). It's always felt to me like it really complemented my 4 or 6k finish well. However, today I ran across this article:

http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/Stropping.html

which seems to paint stropping in a mostly negative light. I have had problems in the past with a wire edges, so it's possible that the perceived benefit of stropping is really just making up for poor sharpening technique on my end. I'm curious to see how you experienced sharpeners feel about it.


EDIT: Sorry, I should have clarified. I'm specifically referring to stropping on a piece of leather, paper, nanocloth, etc. Not finishing sharpening with edge trailing strokes on a stone. Sorry for the confusion.

[Wjhunt]

I have better results with 1 micron diamond on leather than the green (cro2) compounds. I always strop between trips to the stones.

[Kit Craft]

I have strops of different kinds, some loaded and some not that I have used over time. Honestly, I normally strop on newsprint if I am going to strop at all, between touch ups. Otherwise the only stropping I do these days is on the stone itself.

[Robstreperous]

Yeppp. All the time. I have several gyutos I keep at pretty high refinement (10 to 15K) and they benefit from loaded stropping in the .75 and .125 micron range. I do this after sharpening and between sharpening sessions. When I feel the edge losing it a little I'll drop back to 1 and 2 micron before going to the stones. I know there are people who reject the idea of highly refined edges on kitchen knives but it works for me. Especially on my R2 Kashima.

Other knives that I keep at lesser refinement i.e., I keep a Kanehide PS60 at 3K , I strop on naked balsa and horse butt between stones.

It works.

[Bensbites]

Sometimes I strop on a stone, sometime I use mother’s metal polish on cardboard.

[datster]

Like Kit, I have a bunch of strops, loaded and unloaded I have worked with. You are right that a strop can mask not so great stone sharpening especially with a wire edge. I learned that through experience for sure. I mostly strop on a stone now but during my stone progression I may strop on a hard felt strop if I think I may have some residual burr, but after that I still refine the edge on a stone. I'm not a big fan of using a microscope or loupe on every single edge but they really helped me early on to continue to refine my edges. I was doing really well, but seeing the magnified edge at each step really can tell a story. Now I can just spot check if I want because I know what I am looking for now. I still pull out the loaded strops now and then to play, to create a polished edge down to .1 micron for fun.

[slobound]

I still strop on naked horse hide whenever I'm looking for a minor touch up.

[Lepus]

Definitely. I strop on bare horse hide and balsa loaded with Hand American .5μm chromium oxide.

I did skim that essay and it is not entirely innacurate, but it doesn't at all paint a fair picture. It contains quite a few fallacies, enough that I literally do not have time today to break it down.

I think plenty of people have problems with stropping and use it as the crutch the author suggests, or even uses it to no real effect, but that is not an issue unique to stropping. Misunderstanding a technique or tool and its place in a sharpening routine will always result in an inferior edge than could potentially be produced.

[jacko9]

I strop on Cherry Wood loaded with 0.75 micron CBN

[jmcnelly85]

If I’m reading the article correctly, freehand sharpening does not result in a sharp knife. A strop loaded with abrasives doesn’t count as an abrasive and can only be used to further refine a knife only if it still has a burr. Meat cutting should be done with a thin, dull knife.

Reputable manufacturers have produced stropping compounds ranging from really coarse to really fine that are filled with nothing but the exact specific grit. Putting that on a strop is an abrasive no different than a stone or plate. A dull knife can be freehand sharpened with a strop loaded with coarse abrasives progressing up to fine abrasives. Limiting a stropping study to “red, green, and white” compounds is no different from studying bicycles using only bmx bikes bought at Walmart and concluding that bikes cannot go fast.

Here’s a better article
https://scienceofsharp.wordpress.com/20 ... opping-do/

[ken123]

+1 to Lepus' comments. If you use a stone or strop incorrectly, expect poor results. Use it well and the results are quite impressive.

So let's start at the beginning. A strop is composed of a substrate and optionally an abrasive compound. The main purpose of a strop is edge refinement. Deburring and removal of wire edges is best accomplished by not creating them so you don't remove them.

Strop compounds come in a wide range of grits. Chromium oxide is a component of green bars and pastes. Most bars are formulated as a mixture of Chromium oxide and aluminum oxide. These are poorly specified in terms of precision. At the lowest end are bars from multiple vendors. These as you guess are typically 3-5k in range. Other pastes and powders can go as high as half or a third of a micron. Unfortunately Chromium oxide is used primarily as a paint pigment. IT is also poorly specified in terms of particle size. When testing it using PSD (particle size distribution) analyses, it is routine to find particles in excess of 10 or more microns mixed in with supposed half micron CRO. Often the aluminum oxide is not even close to this specification. For good results use a better compound - specifically CBN or poly diamond.

Select your grit based on the last stone used. Strops and stones should be thought of as a continuous sequence of grits. You would not use a very fine strop or stone after a coarse stone. So a 1 micron compound is equivalent to a 16k stone. Use something coarser first after say a 3k stone. If you use too fine a compound - even if poorly specified - just expect a shiny poorly formed edge.

USe a strop made of a good material - kangaroo and nanocloth are best compared to other surfaces. Horse and cow strops are next and dirty old leather belts contaminated with debris are the worst. Paper is ok but doesn't hold up.

A brief introduction. Consider looking over Ken's corner for alternative compounds,. I would specifically recommend something like CBN at 4 or even 2 microns (4k and 8k) to start and use nanocloth strops. This should give you a new perspective on the effective use of strops and compounds.

---
Ken

[Organic]

I think the author of that article is at least partially wrong. Obviously, if you have poor technique on either the stone or the strops your results will reflect that, but stropping can absolutely improve the performance of a properly formed edge. I strop all of my knives at the end of my progression and I always see an improvement in performance. It is important to be careful not to round the apex of your knife by stropping at too obtuse of an angle. I generally make the angle more acute by 1.5 degrees per side when stropping on my Wicked Edge to avoid rounding issues.

[Barashka]

TL;DR: I ended up stropping at the end of sharpening to get rid if final burr and strop between sharpenings a lot, it really extends the life of your edge.


Long version, take it with a grain of salt as I've only experimented with a few things and only as a home cook with interest in knives, not pro in any way and generally just an "ok" sharpener.

- +1 for scienceofsharp, alwasy great stuff
- not all greens compounds are the same, colors do change from manufacturers, it helps to know what exactly is your green vs enkay vs bark river etc.
- diamonds compounds, while more expansive, tend to work faster, last longer .. and have exact grit measurements
- the leather you put either on has a native grit rating as well, rolled buffalo is something you'd probably want a compound on, but equine might not need any.
- the more aggressive your compound the closer you move to sharpening, instead of just stropping (where pure sharpening abrades metal and pure stropping deforms/moves metal).

- I didn't feel like there's much negativity about stropping, personally, though people talk less about it than, say, stones. I'd like to definitely learn more about it.

I do strop, though my experience is quite limited. I tried barkriver white, some diamond on a few buffalo and rolled buffalo strops and bare strops. Also tried high grit wet-dry sandpaper. Here are some personal experiences from that:
- I find it a pain to apply compounds that come in bricks (needs heat, etc)
- my barkriver white strop loads up too fast, and is messy to clean / maintain ... so much so I just don't use it anymore
- applying diamond paste is much easier
- my diamond loaded strop lasted much longer and shows barely any wear
- my bare rolled buffalo strop gets most use just because it's easier, no need to clean any diamond compound leftovers from the edge (if any of that happens at all, don't know).
- wet-dry sandpaper actually works amazingly well, but brakes down quite quickly so my 7k rated strop is now closer to 10k ... also quite aggressive, it's less of a strop and more of a cheapo stone (it won't re-align your edge as much leather, it'll just abrade it away).

In the end when sharpening:
- I feel pretty much no difference from final results of any of them, though I have to say that sandpaper works by far fastest. Diamond second. Though I don't sharpen on strops, I use stones for that.
- I switched to just stropping on bare leather to get rid of any burr / leftovers after a 6k stone.

In the end when maintaining:
- I strop probably once every 5 heavy use sessions, and sharpen every 5 stroppings now. Stropping does extend the life my usably-sharp edge by a huge margin.

Cheers. Please correct me if where I'm wrong.

[Thuja Magus]

A few gentle swipes on clean denim is all I strop on. Never cared about compounds and emulsions and all that jazz. IMO a fresh edge off the stones is always best.

[Jeff B]

...i've been finishing my sharpening progression with a dozen or so passes on a piece of leather with some green compound...

In my experience "a dozen or so passes" is overkill when using a loaded strop. It generally only takes just a few strokes to remove any residual burr and lightly polish. A dozen or so passes and your getting into a territory where you could be raising a small burr or starting to round your edge if your technique is off just a little.
I generally do a few passes on a bare leather strop after my last stone when sharpening and just a few passes on a loaded strop with a 3 micron paste to touch up a knife between sharpenings.
But hey, everybody has their preferences and ways that work for them so I'm not here to say any particular method is right or wrong. If it works for you then that is exactly what you should be doing. What I can say is that I do like strops and think they can be a big part of the sharpening experience!

[easilver]

Until recently, I finished my sharpening on 1.5μ CBN on balsa then on newspaper. The newspaper makes a noticeable difference on refined edges. I recently switched from newspaper to 0.75μ on Nano-cloth, for no other reason than curiosity and wanting to talk to Ken again :¬). The nanocloth is a bit cushier than newspaper, so it might be giving me a mini-micro-bevely-thing that seems to smooth out the edge.

Between sharpening I strop to liven-up the edge. This helps a lot on my AEB-L knives, but it makes a slight improvement on all of them. Once this trick stops working I strop on natural stones. Next step is full-on sharpening.

[Radar53]

Like others have said stropping can cover for poor technique & that's certainly the case for me with my freehand sharpening. Off the EdgePro however, I like to get my edges spot-on directly off the stones and then a very light strop on phone book paper just to tidy up any micro swarf etc hanging around. In between sharpenings I use unloaded leather bench strops (bovine & kangaroo) just to keep the edge fresh & once that doesn't help it's back to the stones.

In terms of technique, I like to strop at at an angle a bit more acute (lower) than the final grind angle and typically use 3 strokes on the RHS followed by three strokes on the LHS all at a pressure of say Pete Nowlan's P1, followed by 3 times a single stroke on the RHS & then a single stroke on the LHS alternating, the single strokes at quite a somewhat less than P1. I'd be interested to hear what others do.

[cwillett]

Speaking of covering up poor technique, I found that my edges were a lot better when I started stropping on a felt strop between stones during a full progression. All this is doing is knocking off any wire edge or cleaning up any left over burr that I missed when I used edge trailing strokes on the stone. As a result, my 1k edge went from "ok, let's get on to the 5k" to "hey, I can actually use this to do something!". As time has gone on, I find that I need the felt strop less and less.

I find the CKTG strop kit to be pretty good at maintaining my knives. A few passes on the balsa strop loaded with 1 micron diamond paste followed by a bare bovine strop is usually all I need to now to keep the knives in good order.

[jdwhitak]

I haven't stropped my knives in the past, but I'm going to start doing. I recently got into leather working and wood working and stropping is done / encouraged in those communities. It seems to make a difference. For me sharpening is something you just have to do. It's not a hobby in itself for me.