Thought on Hand Stropping with cheap compounds?

[Dave Schur]

I was wonerding what thoughts are on hand stropping with the mass produced compounds after using the wicked edge for maintenance?

I currently use my wicked edge down to 1 micron strops and I love the edges. I’d like to keep it that way for as long as possible.

But, I do have a few strops around from my pre wicked edge days. I keep one at home, one in the office, and a portable one for camping. Typically they are loaded on one side with the green compound (chrome oxide?) and the other with red rouge (ferric oxide?).

There is just something so convenient (and a little Zen) about being able to pull out the hand strop after a little knife use and touch it up. It’s a bit more convenient than setting up the WE, and to be honest I find it relaxing (I know, I’m weird).

I think I would just use the red jewelers rouge for touchup, as it is very low abrasive, more of a polishing compound from what I understand.

So my question is, would this be a bad thing (hand stropping on the red rouge)? Am I actually regressing the blade faster by giving it 20 or so strokes occasionally and requiring more frequent trips back to the WE, or is it good for the knife/edge (better than leaving it alone)? I also wonder if the randomness (varying angles/pressures/draws across the edge) inherent in hand stropping (and controlled out on the WE), might actually lead to a higher polish or appearance of it, by crossing the scratches.

Dave

[Leo James Mitchell]

A good question Dave. I use some Veritas Green Compound(aluminum and chromium oxide mix .5 microns) from Lee Valley and some gold and a red compound(ferric oxide 1 micron) from a local carving supply to give a few strops now and again to maintain my edges. I am not sure of the micron sizes of these compounds but they seem to do a good maintenance job. The yellow/gold compound seems to be titanium oxide (.25 microns) from what I read on Google a few moments ago.
Leo

[wickededge]

Hey Dave,

I think that if you’re liking the results and the process of hand stropping for touch-ups, then go with it. If you get carried away some time and roll up on the edge too far, it’s easy enough to correct 🙂 You could color the bevel with marker to make sure your hitting the angle correctly freehand.

-Clay

[Dave Schur]

Thanks Clay for confirming hand stropping is not harmful, and thanks for the marker trick, I never thought of that on strops and it gives instant feedback on what is being stopped (really confirmed for me that the whole edge was stropped in one pass – wow!)

I really like that even through your business sell the wicked edge and the associated supplies (diamond strop pastes), you are not overly pushing the supplies, both on this question and the how many knives can I strop before I recharge (~100). It shows you are keeping it real (the results) and not trying to over-push the reusables (strop paste) in the shampoo label model (wash, rinse, repeat).

To me, that is very cool B)

[Leo James Mitchell]

I am not sure of the micron grits I suggested in the post above. Please feel free to correct any errors.

Leo

[Gary]

I really like that even through your business sell the wicked edge and the associated supplies (diamond strop pastes), you are not overly pushing the supplies, both on this question and the how many knives can I strop before I recharge (~100). It shows you are keeping it real (the results) and not trying to over-push the reusables (strop paste) in the shampoo label model (wash, rinse, repeat).

To me, that is very cool B)

Good point, fully agree!

[Leo James Mitchell]

Like any kind of stropping, aside from touching up the edge, it is also slowly convexing the edge. So eventually that bevel will change its shape to the convex shape we know and love. Nothing wrong with that! But if you want, it is but a few minutes work on the WEPS to get a nice sharp shoulder with the attendant bevel. Sweet!

Leo

[don griffith]

I read all of this good information and wonder; “Will I ever get my WEPS so I can try it too?”. Well, will I?
Heh, I don’t know either…
Currently, after I sharpen a blade with my existing system, I strop with 3M lapping film @ 3 micron on a firm mouse pad. It seems to do the job (with my little experience) and it’s not very expensive.

[Ken Schwartz]

Like any kind of stropping, aside from touching up the edge, it is also slowly convexing the edge. So eventually that bevel will change its shape to the convex shape we know and love. Nothing wrong with that! But if you want, it is but a few minutes work on the WEPS to get a nice sharp shoulder with the attendant bevel. Sweet!

Leo

Well you could use the strop mounted on the paddle to freehand sharpen as well, but as LEO points out, stropping on the WEPS will give you greater precision and less rounding of the edge over time. Precision stropping is especially advantageous if you are using several levels of refinement (grits) stropping as opposed to just your final strop. Of course, the compounds you use for stropping on the WEPS can be applied to bench sized strops as well. And the cheap compounds could be used on the WEPS too (not that I would recommend that, but I’m biased 🙂 )

—
Ken

[BassLake Dan]

Like any kind of stropping, aside from touching up the edge, it is also slowly convexing the edge. So eventually that bevel will change its shape to the convex shape we know and love. Nothing wrong with that! But if you want, it is but a few minutes work on the WEPS to get a nice sharp shoulder with the attendant bevel. Sweet!

Leo

Well you could use the strop mounted on the paddle to freehand sharpen as well, but as LEO points out, stropping on the WEPS will give you greater precision and less rounding of the edge over time. Precision stropping is especially advantageous if you are using several levels of refinement (grits) stropping as opposed to just your final strop. Of course, the compounds you use for stropping on the WEPS can be applied to bench sized strops as well. And the cheap compounds could be used on the WEPS too (not that I would recommend that, but I’m biased 🙂 )

—
Ken[/quote]

I did not realize that this thread was here on the forum, as I am a newbie to posting, and have limited understanding of how all this works. So long story short mistakenly I posted my thoughts about the above topics at:
http://www.wickededgeusa.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=6&id=2304&limit=6&limitstart=6&Itemid=63 but will expand them here a bit..

Mentioned in my other post was my preference for non-leather strops and the use of cheap easy to obtain spanish cedar wood strips for a non compliant base material to hold strop compounds. I feel there is a strong case to be made for the abandonment of leather as the stropping material of choice. Now that you have a nice edge on your steel via the WEPS system, why should you convex it with a leather strop? It is the form compliant nature of leather that is causing the convexing, not the compound. I have been stropping blades for many years, experimented with all sorts of compounds and strops, and can say that (for me anyway..) the evil-doer of a bad strop is ( in order of issue..) : 1.) a compliant base material 2.) bad hand technique 3.) and running a distant third (if at all) is the compound itself.

For what is worth, I feel that in the world of knife sharpening, once you get past the level of any compound that is capable of mirroring the metal to the naked eye then you at the limit of what you can reasonably achieve for the purpose of knife sharpening. Discussions of 0.25 micron high purity CBN sprays and the like, are to me (sorry not trying to offend anyone) are more or less of an exercise in nonsense and probably frustration. It takes very specialized, and very expensive equipment to apply such abrasives in a productive way. If you are a technician in a Class 5 clean room, with the right equipment, and the task at hand is flattening the base for a space satellite sensor then yes maybe we should be talking sub micron abrasives.

So I say, go ahead and use “cheap compounds” … experiment, and have fun!

[Leo James Mitchell]

Interesting! Why is it I feel there will be a response to this in short order from Ken,Tom or Clay. I would be sincerely interested to hear why you think that sub-micron stropping beyond the point of mirror polishing to the naked eye, is an exercise in futility…or did I misinterpret what you said. Of course the proof is in the pudding as they say. Let’s taste your pudding, so to speak.
I think others who have used those sub-micron diamond sprays feel they have indeed had visible/provable results. My own opinion is that I can’t see that you are right, but I am a layman in this area so I await more information from those with more knowledge than I.
For me the answers to these questions bears on the very first question I ever asked regarding sharpening, ” How sharp is sharp really? When do you reach a point beyond which you are wasting your time and energy? The answers I got on another famous Forum resulted in some interesting responses…in the Chinese proverb sense of the word ‘interesting’ . :woohoo:
Thanks for enlivening an otherwise boring evening for me! :cheer:

Best regards
Leo

[wickededge]

I read all of this good information and wonder; “Will I ever get my WEPS so I can try it too?”. Well, will I?
Heh, I don’t know either…
Currently, after I sharpen a blade with my existing system, I strop with 3M lapping film @ 3 micron on a firm mouse pad. It seems to do the job (with my little experience) and it’s not very expensive.

Very soon!

-Clay

[wickededge]

Like any kind of stropping, aside from touching up the edge, it is also slowly convexing the edge. So eventually that bevel will change its shape to the convex shape we know and love. Nothing wrong with that! But if you want, it is but a few minutes work on the WEPS to get a nice sharp shoulder with the attendant bevel. Sweet!

Leo

Well you could use the strop mounted on the paddle to freehand sharpen as well, but as LEO points out, stropping on the WEPS will give you greater precision and less rounding of the edge over time. Precision stropping is especially advantageous if you are using several levels of refinement (grits) stropping as opposed to just your final strop. Of course, the compounds you use for stropping on the WEPS can be applied to bench sized strops as well. And the cheap compounds could be used on the WEPS too (not that I would recommend that, but I’m biased 🙂 )

—
Ken[/quote]

I did not realize that this thread was here on the forum, as I am a newbie to posting, and have limited understanding of how all this works. So long story short mistakenly I posted my thoughts about the above topics at:
http://www.wickededgeusa.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=6&id=2304&limit=6&limitstart=6&Itemid=63 but will expand them here a bit..

Mentioned in my other post was my preference for non-leather strops and the use of cheap easy to obtain spanish cedar wood strips for a non compliant base material to hold strop compounds. I feel there is a strong case to be made for the abandonment of leather as the stropping material of choice. Now that you have a nice edge on your steel via the WEPS system, why should you convex it with a leather strop? It is the form compliant nature of leather that is causing the convexing, not the compound. I have been stropping blades for many years, experimented with all sorts of compounds and strops, and can say that (for me anyway..) the evil-doer of a bad strop is ( in order of issue..) : 1.) a compliant base material 2.) bad hand technique 3.) and running a distant third (if at all) is the compound itself.

For what is worth, I feel that in the world of knife sharpening, once you get past the level of any compound that is capable of mirroring the metal to the naked eye then you at the limit of what you can reasonably achieve for the purpose of knife sharpening. Discussions of 0.25 micron high purity CBN sprays and the like, are to me (sorry not trying to offend anyone) are more or less of an exercise in nonsense and probably frustration. It takes very specialized, and very expensive equipment to apply such abrasives in a productive way. If you are a technician in a Class 5 clean room, with the right equipment, and the task at hand is flattening the base for a space satellite sensor then yes maybe we should be talking sub micron abrasives.

So I say, go ahead and use “cheap compounds” … experiment, and have fun![/quote]

Thank you for your thoughts here! I agree with you completely about experimenting and having fun – the system allows you to play in many ways and to control different variables to isolate the things you want to study. I held a very similar position to you about sub-micron polishing for a long time. As an outfitter, I do a lot of field dressing and over the years, I’d decided (mostly by reading the anecdotes of others) that a 3.5 micron finish was optimum for field dressing, that a knife should have enough tooth on the edge to get cuts going easily. Two years ago, I entered a knife sharpening competition with some guys on Knife Forums: Knife Sharpening Competition[/url]. The competition landed squarely in the middle of my hunting season, in between the archery hunts and the rifle hunts. For the competition, I decided to take the knife Tom sent me down to .25 microns with some spray from Hand American. While I was at it, I decided to do the same to my hunting knife since it would be a perfect experiment – I had just completed 3 weeks of using the knife daily with the 3.5 micron finish and I had another couple of weeks of daily use ahead of me. I took that knife down to .25 microns and set off for elk camp. I expected that if I saw a difference, it would be negative. I was completely shocked, along with the rest of my crew, at the ease with which the knife zipped through the extra thick, very sticky hide along the back of the neck of a bull elk. The back of the neck is usually very difficult to get through and even with a scalpel sharp knife, it’s a chore. This newly sharpened knife just sailed through it. I became somewhat of a convert immediately.

I’ve also had enough experience with super polished edges to feel that they aren’t ideal for all situations – cutting zip ties for example. They also don’t help with tough skinned fruits and vegetables if the blade is super thick and the angle is somewhat wider. They take more work to create and more work to maintain. They are perfect for some things, not for others. I took some photographs using sliced strawberries and kiwis the other day and played with the knife edge while cutting them. At 17 degrees and 1000 grit, the cuts were doable, came out well but felt like too much work. I took the knife down to .5 microns, still at 17 degrees and the blade sailed right through as though there were no resistance at all.

As for the kinds of compounds, the sky is the limit and there is a lot of fun to be had. A lot of us are studying various compounds and I hope you’ll join us with your own studies and posts.

For my take on leather, I’ll save that for another post!

-Clay

[Leo James Mitchell]

Quote “I’ve also had enough experience with super polished edges to feel that they aren’t ideal for all situations – cutting zip ties for example. They also don’t help with tough skinned fruits and vegetables if the blade is super thick and the angle is somewhat wider. They take more work to create and more work to maintain. They are perfect for some things, not for others. I took some photographs using sliced strawberries and kiwis the other day and played with the knife edge while cutting them. At 17 degrees and 1000 grit, the cuts were doable, came out well but felt like too much work. I took the knife down to .5 microns, still at 17 degrees and the blade sailed right through as though there were no resistance at all.” Quote by Clay

What kept me from seeing the answer to my question, “How sharp is sharp enough?” is that I didn’t realize there were different kinds of ‘sharp’ not just one! One sharp might cut paper nicely but do poorly at cutting plastic ties, another might be good for cutting cardboard but not so good butterflying chicken breasts. Over a couple of years experimenting with various edges, methods and stropping with different compounds I came to realize what Clay alluded too in his post.
I have seen differences using sub-micron media and so your comment took me aback, especially since you seemed to have some kind of background in the sciences…reference to level 5 clean room, et al. I realize that there is a big difference between a subjective/anecdotal observation and a measured scientific/objective observation, so I thought perhaps you were basing your comments on the latter.
Good stuff. This is the way people learn, by exchanging differing views and perhaps getting a clearer picture of things as they really are. I look forward to more back and forth with thoughts and experiences. Please continue. I believe this is a very important subject.
Cheers

Leo

[BassLake Dan]

Quote “I’ve also had enough experience with super polished edges to feel that they aren’t ideal for all situations -……” Quote by Clay

What kept me from seeing the answer to my question, “How sharp is sharp enough?” is that I didn’t realize there were different kinds of ‘sharp’ not just one! One sharp might cut paper nicely but do poorly at cutting plastic ties, another might be good for cutting cardboard but not so good butterflying chicken breasts….

…differing views and perhaps getting a clearer picture of things as they really are. I look forward to more back and forth with thoughts and experiences. Please continue. I believe this is a very important subject.
Cheers

Leo

Well, this discussion quickly runs up against the common brick walls of any subject where there are differing points of view. It is hard to discuss anything unless we all agree on the definitions for the subject matter at hand. For starters 1.) What is a sharp edge for your purpose, How do you, personally, define that? For a suggested frame of reference, if you will: a set of ground rules for the discussion, maybe we can take the following definitions of a “sharp edge” from the famous monograph (which probably everyone has by this time read: http://www.bushcraftuk.com/downloads/pdf/knifeshexps.pdf

In that paper John D. Verhoeven. Emeritus Professor. Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Iowa State University states two important frames of reference for his definition of a sharp edge in any discussion of knife sharpening systems. First he establishes “razor blades” as the gold standard against which he will test various knife sharpening methods. Second he mentions his set of “standards of comparing blades sharpened (in his study)” to the following metrics: 1.) edge width 2.) straightness along the edge 3.) smoothness of the face surface.

Clay quickly zeroed in on my issues with all this “sub micron, super sharp knife, turn everything into a .24 micron razor blade edge” discussion. I feel knives (at least the type of knives I personally am sharpening with the WEPS system) are in the realm of purpose specific tools. For me, all sharpness is not created equal for all possible purposes that the blade may be pressed against! Just ask any wood worker who has accidently over sharpened his tools to too fine an angle and then tried to work his prized piece of lignum vitae. Sometimes razor blades are NOT the ticket to success !

So, are we agreeing with Professor Verhoven? Are razor blades the Gold Standard? Do you want to turn *all* your knives into razor baldes? To that I say, “Hummmm… let me think about that..”

So, for me, working a range of blades from pocket EDCs to fine kitchen cutlery to my friends Sushi knife (personally I hate raw fish!) I am working with old strips cut out of Cigar Boxes and the cheapest polishing compounds I can find (heck I have even used some of my girl friends Wrights Silver Polish!!!) .. and getting excellent results

Yes one of these days, just for sh*&%ts and grins, I will try to mount a piece of optically flat glass in a WE Blank and spray it with CBN and proceed to sharpen my metronome blade (just kidding…), but for now, I will stumble along with my “cheaper is better” point of view.

Happy sharpening and have Fun !

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