Aluminium or glass backing?

[Nicholas Angeja]

Hey guys,

Question about the possible mounting options for strops. what are the individual benefits of either aluminium or glass to back nano or kangaroo products to the wicked edge handles? Is glass mainly better because of the consistency in flatness?

[Mark76]

Interesting question! What I hear is indeed that the glass seems to be more consistently flat than the aluminium. However, I don’t know whether that is true (although it sounds reasonable).

But more importantly: does it matter in practice? The deviations must be tiny (the aluminium I use is really smooth) and the glass or aluminium is covered by leather or nano cloth.

Any ideas or experiences?

Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge

[cbwx34]

Yup, flatness. Not so much an issue with leather (although it might be as thin as the leather and nano cloth is), but I’ve used some lapping films, that you could see high and low spots on with an aluminum backing.

In reality though, I’m not sure flattening the aluminum blanks made that much difference… maybe one of those OCD things. :silly:

[Phil Pasteur]

The aluminum that I have gotten from places like Lowes or Home Depot is really not very flat. I think I read that it is extruded. Lapping AL is a pain becuse it clogs anything you abrade it with. I got some Kangaroo strops form Ken Schwartz. He uses some very thin aluminum under the ‘Roo to lift it above the depression in the stock WEPS platens. This keeps the thickness close to the WEPS leather strops. He claims that particular type of sheet AL is very flat… I made some paddles for the lapping films. I used glass. It works very well fro the films. Considerably better than the AL I tried first If you want flat, the easiest way to get it is with glass.

How important is it for your strops to be flat? I think pretty important, especially when using sub-micron abrasives. The last thing you want, even at the microscopic level, is for your angles at the edge to be changing randomly while you are stropping.

Phil

[Mark76]

I made some paddles for the lapping films. I used glass.

How did you do that? There must be a way to cut glass, but frankly I’ve got no idea…

Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge

[Phil Pasteur]

I bought paddles (handels with platens) from WEPS. I went to a local glass shop and told thenm I wanted 4 pieces of 1/8″ thick borofloat glass with the correct measurements. They cut them for me and I glued them on to the paddles.

Before that I bought some made up from Ken Schwartz. That is the far easier way to go.

Phil
EDIT

I thought about it and remembered that I had cut glass in the past. I replaced some window glass that I had to cut. I even found the little wheeled glass cutting… ot scribing tool. I found this, among other videos out there… they make it look very easy… I think I screwed up a few times before I got it right… but that has been close to thirty years ago…

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