I have almost no chip carving experience, but, I purchased a set of flex cut chip carving knives. I expected these knives to show up sharp and that all I needed to do was to strop them to keep them sharp.
I also have a chip carving knife from Hock Tools. I had purchased a ceramic stone to sharpen it (back in 2011) but I managed to lose it so I grabbed a Black hard Arkansas stone from Dan's Whestones (Dan claims this is their finest stone) and I was using that. Note that I intend to try the Norton Ascent Ceramic stones since Norton claims that they produce a better edge than their translucent which is their finest stone.
I made my own strop and added the Flex Cut compound on the rough side. I was stropping my Flex Cut knife to keep it sharp. It cut, but the Hock Tools knife seemed much sharper than the Flex Cut knife so I bit the bullet and I used the Arkansas stone rather than the strop. The Flex Cut knife cut much better. So I came here and I saw this post from a few years back:
https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....-carving-knife
I saw a claim that stropping made the knife sharper and that the only thing needed to keep it sharp was stropping. I have already packed everything but I will try some tests in the next few days, but I do have some questions:
- Do you really just need stropping to keep your carving knife sharp (for me that means chip carving) after it is sharp?
- I thought that Flex Cut knives came fully ready to go. They were shiny and sharp, but are sharper and cut better off the Arkansas stone. It had not occurred to me to throw it back onto the strop. But, does this sound right? Maybe I am just poor with stropping.
- Maybe I am rounding my edge on the leather strop. Maybe I can just try it on a bit of popular for stropping? Would hard maple be better?
I am just trying to figure out what I should try next. Ironically, when I had a chip carving class in 2011, they did not even mention using a strop. All they did was sharpen on a ceramic stone.
Also, based on the comments in the link above, I ordered a copy of the chip carving book to give it a skim / read.