Hmm cleaning with Amsoil? I would’ve never thought of it. Well I cleaned my strops about 10 knives ago or so with denatured alcohol and a toothbrush. Got them pretty clean. The first time I put paste on the strops I did it dry and rubbed the two strops together which yielded a decent amount of excess coming off on the edge for the first few knives. In the piece of paper that came with my strops, it said that wetting the strops with alcohol before applying the paste could help it get in the leather better (if I remember correctly) so I tried that this last time. It made the paste thinner and spread on the strop much easier. What I noticed was that the strop turned black much quicker, only after a couple knives. The strops before I cleaned weren’t even as black as they were after 5 knives or so after this last cleaning and reapplication.
I only get the sticking with the roo strops which are sprayed and not pasted. They will stick so bad that they, even with no paste, will leave residue on the bevel. I wish Clay or someone had some microscopic pics of edges with stropping with alcohol and no alcohol.
The reason the amsoil works so well is that it has detergents in it so it disolves the gunk which helped me out greatly. But I would think that ANY kind of oil would work good for making it slicker and lowering the stiction.
I have roo strops w/ .125 cbn, and while they do stick slightly, it’s not all that bad actually. So I don’t know why you would be experiencing this?
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