Chris Griggs
11-12-2011, 3:03 PM
So as much as I love my ceramic stone water stones, when I'm in the midst of working I often prefer to use my arkansas stones, since I can just leave them sitting on the bench. My one issue has been that I hadn't yet found stropping medium I liked. Actually, if I work my surg black correctly a strop is hardly necessary for anything other then blades used for final smoothing, but I always like to get the sharpest edge possible regardless of the task.
I'm haven't wanted a leather of felt strop for various reasons, one of which is I don't like stropping on something soft - ham handed as I am, its just too easy for me to mess up the edge geometry. I've used MDF before too, but haven't really liked it as it goes out of flat pretty quickly in my humid area, and I can't help but worry that it will have some embedded grit in it (although I never actually experienced the latter problem)
Anywho, today I was messing about at my bench when a 12" x 4" piece of marble that I use for lapping caught my eye, and I thought to myself that would be a great base for a strop. I then saw a pack of sandpaper sitting next to it, and got to thinking that the thin cardboard in comes in would make a great ridgid stropping medium if it were glued to the marble.
Anyway, long story short, I gave it whirl, rubbed on some green stuff and honing oil, and low and behold - the best strop I've ever used (not that I've used that many).
212758I messed with it for a while this morning and its hard enough that if you don't overdo the green stuff you can actually work the back of a blade side to side as you would on a stone without the corners digging in (although I am going work the blade back on a flat water stone again just to make sure it's not dubbing the corners). For the bevel you still only want to use a pulling stroke, but the hardness makes it really easy to maintain the existing bevel geometry. My one concern was that the cardboard wouldn't hold up to oiling, which is my preference when applying green stuff, but so far no issues in that area - the thin cardboard seems to hold up very well
So does anyone else use this or similar as a strop? Is it one of those things that is old as the hills, but I've just not heard of? I've seen a lot of suggested stropping mediums, but this is one I can't recall coming across. I'll have to mess with it some more but so far it seems to make a fantastic strop/hone, and I'm pretty psyched about it.
I'm haven't wanted a leather of felt strop for various reasons, one of which is I don't like stropping on something soft - ham handed as I am, its just too easy for me to mess up the edge geometry. I've used MDF before too, but haven't really liked it as it goes out of flat pretty quickly in my humid area, and I can't help but worry that it will have some embedded grit in it (although I never actually experienced the latter problem)
Anywho, today I was messing about at my bench when a 12" x 4" piece of marble that I use for lapping caught my eye, and I thought to myself that would be a great base for a strop. I then saw a pack of sandpaper sitting next to it, and got to thinking that the thin cardboard in comes in would make a great ridgid stropping medium if it were glued to the marble.
Anyway, long story short, I gave it whirl, rubbed on some green stuff and honing oil, and low and behold - the best strop I've ever used (not that I've used that many).
212758I messed with it for a while this morning and its hard enough that if you don't overdo the green stuff you can actually work the back of a blade side to side as you would on a stone without the corners digging in (although I am going work the blade back on a flat water stone again just to make sure it's not dubbing the corners). For the bevel you still only want to use a pulling stroke, but the hardness makes it really easy to maintain the existing bevel geometry. My one concern was that the cardboard wouldn't hold up to oiling, which is my preference when applying green stuff, but so far no issues in that area - the thin cardboard seems to hold up very well
So does anyone else use this or similar as a strop? Is it one of those things that is old as the hills, but I've just not heard of? I've seen a lot of suggested stropping mediums, but this is one I can't recall coming across. I'll have to mess with it some more but so far it seems to make a fantastic strop/hone, and I'm pretty psyched about it.