Is stropping really an effective practice?

Guy McVer said:
So I take it you don't believe that skin and hair building up on the edge of the razor are an issue?
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Nobody said that, but it's not the only issue. Stropping is for refining an edge. The edge gets cleaned any time you strop. Both are true. Neither is "more correct".
 
beeinak said:
I take it you have never noticed a barber cleaning a straight razor prior to stropping it.
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Well it makes sense not to get the strop too dirty. It would be counter-productive.

Kbrasmodeler said:
Nobody said that, but it's not the only issue. Stropping is for refining an edge. The edge gets cleaned any time you strop. Both are true. Neither is "more correct".
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If we accept that both are true, then to what extent? I said earlier that even wiping an edge probably removes some tiny amount of metal, but it's probably negligible.

I don't think stropping is fixing the edge. For that to be true then it has to be removing a significant amount of metal, or perhaps straightening a burr without removing it. Now it can get hairy (pun intentional) defining what's a burr at a certain point (pun not intentional), but strops are soft enough to wrap around the apex, so you shouldn't be able to straighten a burr with one.
 
Guy McVer said:
Well it makes sense not to get the strop too dirty. It's counter-productive.



If we accept that both are true, then to what extent? I said earlier that even wiping an edge probably removes some tiny amount of metal, but it's probably negligible.

I don't think stropping is fixing the edge. For that to be true then it has to be removing a significant amount of metal, or perhaps straightening a burr without removing it. Now it can get hairy (pun intentional) defining what's a burr at a certain point (pun not intended). But strops are soft enough to wrap around the apex, so you shouldn't be able to straighten a burr with one.
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As you have been told, stropping only fixes an edge that isn't very dull. It removes a small amount of metal. A very dull edge needs resharpening, although stropping would eventually work, but very slowly. ALL sharpening, if done correctly, leaves a clean edge, and I've found that cleaning gunk off the edge often restores cutting ability. When it doesn't, often times stropping does.
 
I'm no expert on the subject...I do like to strop, generally because I feel like I can detect a difference in the edge, and some refinement...before going back to ceramic or diamond hones at some point for more concerted sharpening. I have strops that are both naked and loaded.

But, I don't think that stropping is "necessary" for most of the sorts of things I do, which do not require extreme levels of shaving ability, like if I were preparing a slide for examination under the microscope.

In the hands of a competent sharpener, I'd opine that similar results can be obtained by more than one method.
 
Guy McVer said:
So I take it you don't believe that skin and hair building up on the edge of the razor are an issue?
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As far as I can remember those barbers used some sort of towels to wipe those razors when shaving.

Heh, I used to wipe blades in my pants before cutting tests but my lady saw me and.... you know.
Seriously, after sharpening and stropping I always clean the edge with a cotton pad and alcohol before I do a cutting test with news paper or toilet paper.
Yesterday I was doing some oak carving. I wanted to see for how long the knife would hold the edge and cut news paper. Before each paper test I cleaned the edge.
You can't believe how much debris can be on the edge after sharpening or cutting.
 
Richard338 said:
It works. My last step after the Wicked Edge is stropping on diamond loaded leather. Sharpness tests improve significantly.

(take it from me, I solved Wordle on my first try a couple days ago)
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Well, I've never accomplished that with Wordle, and I assume I never will...though I'm pretty good at it. (Oh wait, I thought you meant on the first try out of six on a given puzzle. LOL. Or did you? :oops:)

Anyway, you had me at "it works" even without it. :cool:
 
From what I can see, stropping with the appropriate compounds matched to the alloy type, helps knock down some of the ridges on the striations on the edge bevel.

This smooths and polishes the edge, and also creates a bit of a tiny convex at the apex.

Less drag, less resistance.
 
I don’t really know but it seems to help my edge. I do it anymore out of habit but I can’t tell you that my edge benefits from it. I would like to believe that it does.
 
It obviously depends on how good you are stropping on stones. People who are really good at it can get BESS scores in the 100g range without stropping, but I think those folks are few and far between. Like, very few and very far.

I'd say that I'm an intermediate-level freehand sharpener. I know how it's supposed to be done, and I've been doing it off and on for my whole adult life, but I've never done it consistently enough to get really good at it. I'm happy if I can get a BESS score below 200g coming straight off the stones. Not great, but I can invariably use various strops to get my freehand edges close to 100g on the BESS scale.

In other words, stropping improves the sharpness of my edges by around 100%, so obviously well worth doing!
 
Guy McVer said:
I have long suspected that all of the people praising the virtues of stropping for edge maintenance were unwittingly just cleaning their edges off on the strop rather than actually restoring the edge. I think they may have been under a false impression of what the strop was doing.
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Recently I've bought a nice fixed blade in 12c27n steel. This is my first knife made of this steel so I'm still testing it whenever I have some time.
I test it doing some kitchen things, cutting cardboard boxes and doing work around the house. But I don't have a warehouse of those boxes and there is only so much branches to chop around my house.
So I figured out a wood carving would do some wear and a news paper cutting test will show how the edge is holding. But along I did another test for the sake of this thread.
I skipped my spruce sticks and go directly to my ½ by ½ inch oak stick. I can't tell which sort of oak it is. It's dark brown color. This thing must be at least 40 years old…dry as a gun powder and hard as an antler. I sharpened the stick like a would sharpen a pencil…you know…holding the knife with my right hand and stick with my left hand pushing the blade with my left thumb on the spine of the blade.
I know….get to the point.
Anyhow; after each 10 or so cuts I tested the edge on newspaper. Before each test I cleaned the edge with a cloth and alcohol. I always clean the edge before testing.
When the blade started to have some trouble going through news paper I stropped it on my leather strop loaded with 6 micron diamond compound….5 or 6 alternating strokes.
After cleaning (to remove stropping compound off the edge) the knife went through news paper cross-grains without a problem.

So; I would say; you can restore the edge by stropping if the edge has not too much damage.
I newer tried to restore a blunt edge with a strop. I just refresh it on my diamond stones first and then it goes on the strop.
 
Guy McVer said:
I have long suspected that all of the people praising the virtues of stropping for edge maintenance were unwittingly just cleaning their edges off on the strop rather than actually restoring the edge. I think they may have been under a false impression of what the strop was doing.
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My method for determining sharpness, aside from feel, is to look for the shine in the edge of the blade.
I've noticed that dirt/sworf/stropping residue can obscure that visual inspection, so I'm always sure to wipe the edge clean.
I can say, definitively, that stropping is an effective way to maintain an edge and take the shine out of the apex.
I'm definitely not seeing the impacts of wiping away dirt.
 
EngrSorenson said:
I can say, definitively, that stropping is an effective way to maintain an edge and take the shine out of the apex.
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The only shortcoming I see is with so called toothy edges. After each refreshing on a strop you loose some of those teeth till you end up with a very refined push cutting edge.

If I may add...
here and there I see a statement that you can round the edge if you strop too much and you loose the sharpness.
I must say I couldn't do that so I wonder if I misunderstood the word "round".
Do this mean radius on the apex (dull edge) or convexing the edge?
 
TheOne45 said:
If I may add...
here and there I see a statement that you can round the edge if you strop too much and you loose the sharpness.
I must say I couldn't do that so I wonder if I misunderstood the word "round".
Do this mean radius on the apex (dull edge) or convexing the edge?
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If one is not careful with their stropping, they may blunt the edge which they had properly apexed on the stone. (Rounding the very edge.)

But stropping with abrasives can also be used to convex the bevel as well.
 
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