Official Luthiers Forum!

Dear all,
happy new year to you all.
Well, Lee Valley has the free shipping promotion again, so I am thinking about getting a few things.
One of the item is the leather strop.
I want to ask whether anyone has used these:
http://www.leevalley.com/US/Wood/page.a ... at=1,43072
or
http://www.leevalley.com/US/Wood/page.a ... at=1,43072
Are they good?


Or the Horse Butt Strop from TFWW is the best way to go?
Thank you so much for your input.

I've had one that size for many years and it works well for smaller things. 3 or 4 years ago I got a horsehide strop that is probably about 4" x 14" or so that I think is much more useful.

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

don't waste your money!
buy some leather somewhere and mount it to a board. a wide belt at a thrift shop would work great. i use both the "smooth" sides and the split suede sides...if you add honing compund the suede compresses and gets pretty smooth in time

I also would suggest not wasting ur $. I used to use leather all the time but have switched to MDF charged with green compound. I felt like the leather would dub my edges slightly. I highly recommend trying the mdf for chisels and plane blades. I would go ahead and buy their green polishing compound though, will last you a very long time.

i like to take it up to about 2000 grit on my woodworking tools.....then, even when i strop, i still detect a burr breaking off sometimes. i definitely feel it gives a better edge, with my equipment. sure i guess you can buy expensive stones that go way up the grits, but, thats kinda what strops were always for. they work and they're cheap, i think
i don't use whet stones, i use a granite surfacing stone milled to 0.001" tolerance or something in that ballpark (maybe it was 0.0001" i forget), and lay paper on that( yeah i know it is less consistent than the surfacing stone). but the beauty is, i just keep changing the paper and never worry about replacing or truing unlevel stones. works out pretty well
my tormek i use for regrinding/removing chips/initial geometry. for knives i like to have a bit of "tooth" on the blade so i don't worry about going superfine on grits, or stropping (there is such a thing as overkill ) ...knives are used in a slashing or sawing motion, so i think they work best with some tooth.
on a tangent: with u-profile tools, ie gouges, i use loose leather thats about 4mm thick, and i bend it over by hand forming a "U" shape, and tweak it by squeezing to exactly match the inner profile of the gouge, and strop the inner, or unbeveled side of the cutting edge

edit: took a pic of one of my free DIY strops...with a hand me down Craftman chisel, c.1980 when they were made in USA. pretty decent chisels too, no complaints

I use strops all the time .......... nothing better to get that final polished edge. (eg The mirror finish of a polished back of the chisel makes paring 45's for purfling joints so much easier)
Buy the "leather pack" rather than the actual strop
http://www.leevalley.com/US/wood/page.a ... at=1,43072
I have the large piece glued to a board nested with all my stones (a kind of slide out drawer arrangement) and two smaller ones on a more typical 2 sided strop hanging with my carving tools. (Use the remaining as sanding backers, vise protectors or whatever.

_________________
Dave
Milton, ON

I have to disagree with you're edges not improving with stropping after your 8000 grit stone. Maybe they aren't improved enough for what you use them for but I bet they are slightly sharper as long as you haven't dubbed an edge. I strop some of my blades off a 10000 grit Sigma ceramic stone, but only if I need that extra sharpness for paring or smoothing tough woods. But this stropping is all done on a piece of mdf with LV green honing compound rubbed on it. I swear by stropping on a hard flat surface such as mdf compared to leather. I just have never been impressed with my dubbed over edges off of leather. As Todd said though, carving tools are a different story. The leather is needed in order to form to the shape you are stropping.

But this is all experience gained from furniture making and not guitar making. I have zero experience with these tools for making a guitar.

I also strop after a 8,000G waterstone, using the Green compound onto a hardwood block. Certainly makes a difference.

How does one strop a chisel or plane iron? Do you use a guide to strop the bevel side, like when using a stone?

Yes, except that the blade is lifted off the strop on the forward stroke i.e. it's polished on the pull stroke only.

Another alternative (perhaps unconventional these days):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6ykVzL2 ... sults_main

known as convex bevel sharpening. I suppose it's convex bevel stropping.

you don't need a guide; with the above blade types, the bevel face is so large it is easy to tell when it is making positively flat contact with the strop/ stone....unless it was ground poorly to begin with and thus was never flat

Thank you, Michael. That video was helpful. I also found this article helpful...

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/WoodworkTe ... paste.html


And this Sawmill Creek discussion...

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread. ... Stropping!!