Bare Strop vs Loaded with CBN or Diamond

[Kerneldrop]

When does one use CBN spray and Diamond pastes, and when does one just use a bare strop?

I have .5 and 1.0 Micron CBN spray and Diamond pastes, kangaroo stops, balsa wood.

I read where the 1.0 Micron is ~ 16,000, and .5 is ~32,000 grit.
I'm assuming bare smooth Kangaroo leather would be a higher grit.

[TheLegalRazor]

I've never understood the conversion of microns to grit. I've looked at various online sources and they're conflicting and all over the place. Perhaps someone here who is more knowledgeable can explain it. However, I use 1.0 micron diamond spray on a balsa strop frequently on all my knives to maintain the edge.

[jmcnelly85]

https://www.chefknivestogoforums.com/vi ... .php?t=196

It’s not that bare leather is a higher grit as something of a certain micron measurement as much as it can burnish any grit.

In terms of when, if you like the results, whenever. If you don’t like the results, never. A common approach is to move through loaded ones and finish on bare, another common approach is to use bare between stones, there’s no wrong answer. Take this with a grain of salt cause I’m not the biggest strop guy, the vast majority of my sharpening is on stones.

[Kerneldrop]

Take this with a grain of salt cause I’m not the biggest strop guy, the vast majority of my sharpening is on stones.

What stone(s) do you use in place of a strop?
I was thinking about a 16k Shapton Glass, but I already have a Spyderco Ultra Fine bench stone that is around 10k. Wasn’t sure if they would do the same thing in the real-home-kitchen-world.

[jmcnelly85]

I view abrasives differently. If I use shapton pro 5k at roughly 3 micron, I’ll have an edge no different than if I used a strop loaded at 3 micron. The abrasive mediums are interchangeable tools used to sharpen, while, the action of stropping can happen on either medium as part of a sharpening progression. If I really wanna be honest I find greater variation edge to edge depending on my progression than I do from my finishing stone. Big jumps vs small jumps vs maximizing a stone vs how refined do I want past teeth play a bigger role than where I stop.

[Radar53]

I'm a bit of a luddite with stropping, so take this with a grain of salt.

My understanding is that like when you file a piece of steel, the finish has all sorts of detritus, dags and unfinished metal destruction going on at the workface. So to me stropping is a "cleansing" action, to align all the spiky still-connected bits at the edge and it gets rid of all that nuisance stuff that is useless and just hanging around, spoiling the outcome. Forgive all the technical jargon here ...........

I'm thinking that stropping using say a 3 micron diamond paste is not much different to cleaning up the edge you have and moving onto a good 3 micron stone. Also you can end up with a number of strops, isolated in plastic bags, so that they don't cross contaminate and otherwise confuse the issue.

Generally, I let the next stone in my sequence, clean up the rubbish from the previous stone and then do it's own thing. Once I've reached the last stone in my sequence, I then strop on newsprint to start the cleansing of the edge. From there depending on how far I want (or need) to go, I will strop on rough & smooth bovine, potentially followed by rough & smooth kangaroo. Easy, no fuss and it produces killer edges. Or am I missing out on another rabbit hole here ???????????????

[ex1580]

I concur in that it's just a sharpening medium. A 3 micron abrasive on a strop is approximately the same as in a stone. I think when you get to that finishing level that strops just cost a whole lot less than stones. Also, diamonds work better on wear resistant steels.

In terms of what medium, I read somewhere that balsa is better for less than 1 micron due to the porous nature of the wood being able to hold on to the abrasive better. I like the feel of leather better though. Which leather is hard to say. I think some of these animals eat at the same zoo and it's hard to tell the difference.

As for bare leather, I think of it as a tool to fold a burr off with a couple of laps at 2-5 degrees more than I was sharpening. I don't notice it doing anything otherwise when I am sharpening. You could use it to keep your edge straight between sharpenings too. It should be noted that I like wear resistant steels so your milage may vary.

[Kekoa]

Bare leather doesn't have an actual grit, like jmcnelly85 said it more burnishes steel than anything else. It is difficult to describe exactly what happens to the edge when stropped on bare leather, and people who have done a lot of research are still learning more about how various sharpening methods and mediums effect the edge, but rather than get caught up on what is actually happening, you probably will benefit most from personal experimentation. Everybody has different opinions on what is best, but that is partially due to different tastes and techniques, both of which you may not share in common with someone else. You might want something more toothy, or more refined, you might like the effect of stropping, or you might not. The only way to really find out is to test it and see what you think.

What I will say for certain though is that bare leather should only be used as a fine de-burring step, or as a refinement step after you have a good apex. There is no sense in trying to make a noticeably unsharp knife sharper by rubbing it on leather that has no real ability to remove material and re-establish a proper apex.

Some people do strop to maintain the edge, but I have only ever seen maintenance stropping done with compound of some sort, which can in fact remove material. There are different compounds, but diamonds are the most versatile because they cut everything well. In the end when using strops with compound, it is no different than sharpening, except that you are doing it on top of a different medium, such as leather. So stropping on leather with fine compound is very similar to stropping on a fine stone except that leather has some give to it, so you will be introducing some convexity in the process.

The short answer though, is try it out and see what you like. That is the important difference between methods.

[Kerneldrop]

In its simplest form, I was curious if there was a benefit to stropping on bare leather when there's sprays and pastes to make a loaded strop.
It seems that answer is yet to be determined and is based on "it depends" lol
I have 3 leathers so I can make 2 loaded and 1 bare.
I'll just keep messing around it and see if I can tell a difference....that's the fun anyways.

[ex1580]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is polishing. If you want to make something shiny the strops are really handy for that. I have been exploring this for a bit and previously failed at polishing the scratches off of the face of some Wusthofs with polishing paper. These days I have more strops and it took me about 15 minutes to take the scratches out of a couple of MAC Pros. I started at 12 micron and kept halving the abrasive size until I was happy (1 micron I think), then buffed it with some metal polish. Looked great! Then I went back to the Wusthofs and did them. It took two hours for three knives. It came out really nice though! Mono steel is a lot harder than a soft cladding I guess. It makes me happy to see them with no scratches every day. I have a couple of strop cut offs I got here at CKTG and use one of them treated with 3 micron diamonds in the travel bag. It's way better than a steel!

[Kerneldrop]

Is what got me started down this stropping rabbit-hole is I can tell a difference when slicing through phone book paper after stropping vs not stropping.
So, naturally, I wanted to maximize the effects that stropping may have had.
Not that it makes a better kitchen edge....
I don't have the skills to slice through paper towels....maybe one day.
My main focus is sharp enough to cut stuff to eat....but it's fun to test my sharpness limits.

[Kerneldrop]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is polishing. If you want to make something shiny the strops are really handy for that.

I have a 1x30 leather belt on my belt sander. And I have a leather wheel on a bench grinder set up for sharpening.
The leather kits came with white compound and green rouge.
It messes with my mind to go from stropping on machines to stropping by hand. lol
I feel like I'm moving so slow and I'm still learning how many passes by hand are needed.

Great job on no scratches. A shiny edge is really nice looking.
I see some guided sharpening folks go to the extreme to get a mirror edge. They turn out awesome.
It's a labor of love for sure.

[Radar53]

Is what got me started down this stropping rabbit-hole is I can tell a difference when slicing through phone book paper after stropping vs not stropping.
So, naturally, I wanted to maximize the effects that stropping may have had.
Not that it makes a better kitchen edge....

I think the difference that you're noticing, is that even stropping on just newsprint "cleans" the edge and lessens the resistance created by having to drag all sorts rubbish, that is still vaguely attached to the edge, through the cut. As Peter Nowlan loves to say, there's bits that keep wanting to hang onto the "mother-ship". So I think you're right in saying that it doesn't make a better edge, but I think that it helps to maximise the edge that you've have made. Just my thinking ...........

[Kekoa]

In its simplest form, I was curious if there was a benefit to stropping on bare leather when there's sprays and pastes to make a loaded strop.
It seems that answer is yet to be determined and is based on "it depends" lol
I have 3 leathers so I can make 2 loaded and 1 bare.
I'll just keep messing around it and see if I can tell a difference....that's the fun anyways.

In the simplest terms, bare leather is good if you don't want to change the grit level of your edge particularly, but want to give just an extra bit of refinement by removing the bits of stuff hanging on to the edge as Radar53 is describing.

Loaded is good because it will do everything an unloaded strop can do, plus it will actually remove material at the same time, hence changing the actual grit level of your edge.

Just depends on what you are looking for.

[Robstreperous]

What I've always understood is, when stropping on bare leather, you're removing any hanging shards of metal as hs been mentioned above.

But it was stressed to me, more importantly, that you're bringing the edge back to true. The edge gets bent kind of like a mohawk hair do and hangs off to one side or the other. Stropping brings it back to a nice, straight, parallel to the blade face angle.

[Ourorboros]

I use a bare strop to make sure I got rid of the burr, or as a kid of steel.
I use a loaded strop instead of a fine stone to finish sharpening or to touch up the blade.

[Robstreperous]

I also use a strop loaded with CBN when I'm working on highly wear resistant steel like CPM.

[Kerneldrop]

I also use a strop loaded with CBN when I'm working on highly wear resistant steel like CPM.

My daily users are whites and blues.
I have a Ginsan and SG2 still in their boxes.
I have a Tojiro VG10. That rounds out my non-carbons.

[taz575]

I use diamond pastes on leather for strops now. They work fast on any steel and you can play with how much you refine the edge, how much tooth you want remaining, etc.

Bare leather is nice for deburring, cleaning or burnishing an edge. Charged leather can remove metal and can round out an apex of the edge if not done carefully.

[Kerneldrop]

Charged leather can remove metal and can round out an apex of the edge if not done carefully.

Will the apex edge round out if you apply too much pressure or use the wrong angle?

I have the magnetic strops and a horse hide hanging strop I got from straight razor designs…I need to use that SRD strop bc it’s pretty cool.