WOW

Hi Josh, welcome to the forum! Enjoy your WEPS and don’t hesitate to ask any more questions.

My first reaction when I read your question was: are you sure you wiped out all scratches from previous grits in your stone progression? If you’ve done everything properly, you should have a pretty mirror edge after the .5 micron strops. That said, cow leather has some abrasive silicones in it itself, so at very low micron ranges nano cloth may work better.

I would have to recommend balsa at this point… it doesn’t have as much “stiction” but it works great and you don’t have to lower angles when transitioning from stones to balsa (dps measured by angle cube is what I’m referring to here).

Would you get the 14/10 in leather or balsa?

I wonder this as well as I haven’t purchased any strops yet and have been doing some research before I purchase them. I see that people state that the leather brings of the polish but balsa brings out crazy sharpness so I was thinking of 14/10 and 5/3.5 on leather to bring out the shine and then the 1/.6 micron on balsa to bring out that final edge and insane sharpness.[/quote]

At such a fine grit/low micron, I’d recommend leather. Stropping is simply another phase in the overall sharpening process. Just like you move to higher and higher grits with the diamonds, the stropping media and the compound applied need to follow the same linear progression. All in all, taking into consideration the entire spectrum from point A to point Z, the abrasives used get finer and finer.