The balsa and the leather have totally different affects on the metal. The balsa is a great, one step honing tool because it’s rigid enough to straighten a rolled edge with ease and allows you to do it with the finest grit spray you have. The leather draws the metal as it works, burnishing as well as abrading the metal. If the edge is not too badly rolled, the leather can also hone. If the edge is badly rolled and the leather won’t straighten it again, you have to drop back to the finest stone you possess which may mean that you’re going backward in grit and will need to progress through the range of leather strops you have. A good combo would the balsa strops in a coarser grit (5/3.5 or 1/.5) and then leather in finer grits.
I apply enough spray so that the surface of the strop is coated with the color of the spray (after shaking the bottle to distribute the particles evenly.) I tend to let the spray dry but don’t find it essential. So far, I’m not reapplying the spray very often, maybe once every 50 knives or so. I need to do more testing to really find out how often to reapply.
Makes sense. Did you use them on balsa or leather?
Any advantage either way ?
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