Leather strop

Jon StokesStaff - September 16, 2020

Video summary A leather strop is a more traditional version of the mousepad and sandpaper technique. The actual skills and principles are all the same
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I can’t seem to find a ‘black bar’ anywhere.  Some white bars on Amazon seem to be coarser than the green?

 

I was having trouble looking up where to buy a black strop compound bar as well. 

Don’t look up “black strop bar” it will autocorrect to “black strip bar”… 

Even on knife sharpening websites that are 100% about selling knife sharpening supplies, they only sold green bars. 

If you search on Amazon though “Black strop compound”  it does come back with some options, although no single black bars. But the prices aren’t bad for the kits it shows and you will have a piece of leather, white, green, and black compound. So that’s what I went with and now I just have some extra.

And yes, i’ve seen that some white bars are coarser than green bars, but in general black = coarse, green = medium, white = fine.

 

I also looked at knife sharpening websites with the same results. Some of the results for ‘black strop compound’ either do not give the type of compound or not the grit.  I did see one that said it was aluminum oxide vs chromium oxide. I don’t know if it makes any difference. Do you? Another admitted its grit was 7 (or 8) microns, which is quite a bit larger than what was recommended in the course. I wish all of the recommended ‘product’ links in the course were updated.

 

In the course it was stated that black was coarse, green is medium and white is fine…

 

Good catch! That is what I meant. haha. I’ll change my post above.

 

DLT trading has the Bark River stropping compounds in stock in all the colors: https://www.dlttrading.com/bark-river-sharpening

Those Bark River bars are what I use in the knife course and are a core part of my kit. A lot of people like them because they’re a little more aggressive than some of the others.

 

Thanks, Jon!

 

What do you use for draw knives?

 

I don’t personally use draw knives, because my woodworking is minimal, but if I did I’d start on black and try to get them down to the green.

 

Speaking of black… I loaded green onto one strop…seemed to work fine.  Black, on the other hand, not so fine. It seems instead of ‘loading’, it just sanded off the rough part of the leather.  The strop doesn’t look black at all and is smoother than a baby’s butt. What happened? Compound not hot enough? What to do with the strop at this point?

 

Did you load the suede size, using a heat gun? Because both those parts are key — the suede and the heat. 

 

Yep, suede side. I used a hair dryer for both green and black. I’m guessing I didn’t get the black hot enough and just ground off the suede instead of rubbing on to the suede…it is smooth and shiny now.  What to do with it?

I’ll get another to re-try the black I guess.