Hello from Charleston, SC
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The hand strop surprised me as well. Compared to how long it took me to make a real noticeable difference with the WE strops, compared to the hand strops, I had a lot more time perfecting, using the term loosely, the WE strops. Remember, when I started using the WEPS the whole thing was new to me, stropping with success that is, and it took a while to get the results with them and I’m still learning. When I bought the first Stropman strop I had some experience using the strops from the WEPS so I was a little more educated for lack of better term and I got and followed Robert’s advise and that of others via U tube. I had tried using other hand strops in the past without success and was blown away with the Stropman strop. The hand strop is just one more tool in my box and I was just throwing it out there. As I stated “some”, not “all”, of the sharpest edges I’ve done have been hand stropped. This is of course just my experience and opinion not only of the strop but of what sharp means to me. Others have different opinions and experience I’m sure. I do use the hand strop for maintenance as well as long as the edge isn’t damaged to bad. If there is damage I steel the edge, 3 to 5 passes and then strop. I’ve been doing this on several knives now for six months or so, which I sharpened with a lansky sharpener and still have not re-sharpened with the WEPS yet and they have actually improved from when they were originally sharpened. Didn’t get nearly as good of results with the lansky of course. I’ve done the same with a few WEPS sharpened knives all though I don’t think they have improved but they haven’t fallen off, at least noticeably.
The WE strops are very good but do take “some” getting used to as does any stropping medium I believe for a variety of reasons. The WE 4/2, 1/.5 diamond emulsion on kangaroo leather are my favorite WE strops. With those I drop the angle .75 to 1 degree from the sharpened angle as they don’t give as much as cow hide, thinner, harder and more consistent.
Sorry if I confused the issue, not my intention. Hope this explains my position adequately.
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You know what, it’s not hard to use the WE strops now. SKSharp did take me back. There was lots of posts and questions that I wrote and threads I read till I got the strop technique down where I did it with good results and didn’t gouge the leather….I have to agree with SKSharp that there’s a bit of a learning curve with strops. It’s so long now that I’m using the WEPS with great success it’s easy to forget the “growing/learning pains” Thanks for taking me back SKSharp.
Marc
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Just make sure you don’t use the WE strops edge-leading. I guess many of us have screwed up their strops that way at least once 🙂 .
Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge
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