Home Forums Gear Knives and Blades Strop - what type is good for hunting knives, and where is a good place to buy

Vince was talking about makeing some. I like mine 18 inch long plus the handle. I use one a lot more than a diamond. I put 6000grit diamond paste on mine.

Do you use plain leather at all? I remember my barber, from many years ago, just using a plain leather strop to touch up his razor.

I normally use paper, or cardboard wheels for stropping, but recently I wanted to try hand stropping, mainly because of what I had read on these forums.

I made a strop by attaching a piece of leather to a wood board, then proceeded to, first, sharpen the knife on a fine stone. I got it pretty sharp, then stropped it on bare leather.

The steel was 154CM at Rc61, and the bare leather did not do much for it. Next, I put Green Chrome Compound on the strop. I used the green compound because that is what I use for my final finish on my blades.

Hand stropping with the green rouge didn't help much, either. One problem was that after using the stone, I left a tiny burr on the edge, and tried stropping it off. The blade felt sharp, but would not slice paper very well. What I was feeling was the burr, and the green rouge was not taking the burr off.

I next tried using some grey compound, which is more coarse than the green, and it removed the burr and the blade got really sharp.

This is just my opinion, but plain leather or even leather with fine compound, such as green chrome does not work all that good on high hardness blades.

I know that razors that barbers use will get extremely sharp, but I don't know how hard the steel is. The barber I used to use had a plain leather strop, but he also had a strop that he used some type of compound on, for when the razor got too dull for the plain leather to restore the edge.