Shopsmith Forums

I have 5 old worn leather belts. I was wondering how well they would work as strops in the shop?

BPR

They work very well. Think of a strop as a very fine, if soft, final honing stone. Use a green or gold charging compound, and have one with no compound at all. Also, the palm of your hand is, for this purpose, un-tanned leather!

The reason we strop is to refine the cutting edge; to create and remove the finest of wire edges. If you look at a barber's razor closely, you will see that it is 'hollow ground', if you take into account the back of the blade. It is laid down on the strop with the full depth of the blade (sharp edge to back edge) on the strop, then pull firmly along the strop while moving the blade from butt to tip. Then back again. By the way, be very careful to lay the blade down straight, pull back, then lift up straight again before setting the blade down again. The rolling motion you see in the movies is incorrect, and will lead to rounding off the cutting edge; this will lead to the need to re-grind the edge.

When the compound had turned black and shiny, it can be scraped off to leave a nice clean area to re-charge with honing compound.

Hope this helps.

Derek

When I asked about the rolling motion I was told to look more closely! Whatdoya-know? The blade was rolled across the back of the blade.

It worked out to be a result of how the blade was held for the first stroke. Fingers down for the first pull stroke and up for the next push stroke.h