The primary interest, task and goal of myself and many of us that have continued to stay plugged in and participate in this W.E. Forum is to answer technique questions presented by new users to W.E. Sharpeners to help them become successful W.E. users. The suggestions we make are those that help these new users learn how to use their W.E. sharpeners with positive results that they can string together to develop their own working, sharpening techniques.
We like to say here" your technique" because, like “Readheads” we each have our own individual spins on our techniques. After sharpening a handful of knives successfully we each start to figure out what we like, and what we don’t, as we string together these progressive steps that yield the results we’re looking for. There is this learning curve we all generally go through that helps us put into practice and string together these individual steps. We string these together into our own individual techniques.
We try to suggest the individual methods for each step of the sharpening process that will give effective results without failing. Some of these methods we share for the beginning sharpeners to try, at the start, are very conservative. This in particular is evident with the stropping phase of W.E. knife sharpening. Stropping at the start can be particularly tricky.
First we’re stropping wih a pliant compressible medium. The abrassive on the stropping handle is not affixed in place stabile and immovable, either. The strop medium can be damaged, (i.e., cut and slashed) while we learn the method. Mistakes are unforgiving and permanent though they really don’t effect our ability to use the strops or the outcomes. We have each learned ourselves, how to strop, following the suggestion to reduce or backoff our sharpening angles by 1 to 2 degrees, to a more acute angle then we sharpened the knife edge, with. This angle adjustment allows us to learn how to use the strops without ruining the sharpened edge, the fruits of our, learned labor, without rounding over the sharpened apex.
Stropping is a balance between angle and applied pressure. This is a learned process through repetitive tries and slight pressure and angle set adjustments. I prefer to strop with more than slight applied pressure. I like the results I attain with this pressure, both physical and aesthetic. 0.5 to 1 degree of back-off allows me to produce these results I seek. I started with a 2 degree back-off several years ago when I was first starting to learn the stropping process.
I slashed and gouged my strops. I learned to strop my edges in portions or sections of the knive’s lengths, then to overlap these sections with blending stropping strokes. I learned to strop the often down curving knife tips also in an up and off, “edge trailing” direction, just like the flatter portions of the knive’s edges. When I first started I tried to strop the entire knife length with one long strop stroke. When approaching the curved tip I inadvertently found myself following he tip down and with the curve, thus directing the strop leather onto and against the knife edge. Another error I made was stopping this up and off “edge trailing” strop motion while the strop was still contacting the sharpened knife edge. This stop motion could also cut the strops. I learned how to strop the tip portion in an up and off direction while stropping with a follow through stroke, not stopping till I had the strop up and off away from contact with the knife edge.
Between, stropping pressure, stropping direction and stropping a knife edges that may curve and change their shapes it takes repetition and practice. Dropping back 1 to 2 degrees is a helpful starting point to let you get successful results as you learn how to strop your edges. After you get the motion, the pressure and the technique down, tweak it how you will.
I like to recommend newbies watch this video. It explains the issue with stropping and rounding off the edge well. The producer is a long time W.E. user:
