10/14 Micron Strops

I use them on leather… doesn’t seem that aggressive to me. If I’m going to polish out an edge, I’ll use them after the ceramics… I’ve never noticed the bevel getting less polished. I don’t think it’s too aggressive for stropping.

15 microns is roughly equivalent to a 1k Chocera stone in terms of grit size. I use particles as coarse as 80 microns on strops, but at that size (I have CBN particles as large as 300 microns) you start running into ‘issues’ using regular strops. I do use 30 and 45 micron particles as strops – nanocloth and leather. They ‘sink’ into balsa only partially sticking out. If the substrate is too hard they roll around.

An interesting approach to larger particles is to use a waterstone as the strop substrate! There is one caveat. The carrier for the particulates must be water soluble!! Otherwise it can damage a waterstone.

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Ken

SO I guess the point I’m trying to make is that it is best to not think of things in terms of stropping honing and sharpening but rather to just call them ALL abrading. So to answer your last question first, a 15 micron strop would be far rougher of a finish than a 10k stone and would be going in the wrong direction.

So saying strops do this and stones do that is wrong. It’s all about the particle size as the major factor. An 80 micron CBN strop cuts way faster than a 10k stone. Not even close.

Does a 15 micron spray leave the same scratch pattern as a 1k Chocera. Not really. It is a simplification to compare all particles on all media as giving the same result just because the particle size is the same. Apples and oranges are about the same size but taste different for example. So most stones are aluminum oxide based (generalization). Compounds can be Aluminum oxide, CBN (cubic boron nitride, polycrystalline or monocrystalline diamond, etc etc) Each of these have different abrasive properties based on particle shape particle hardness, etc etc.

Hope this helps. It’s just the tip of the iceberg.

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Ken

Somewhere on these forums is a nice progression, both backwards and forwards showing the scratches of each grit under magnification. You can really see the scratch patterns from all of them quite well. It may be worth a quick search to find the thread.