Amazing! Denim strop loaded with Flitz

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Oct 4, 2021
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Was reading an article on straight razor sharpening at the Science of Sharp website and the author strongly recommends stropping on denim loaded with metal polish prior to stropping with diamonds on leather. I tried it on my straight and it worked very well. So I thought, maybe it'll work with knives, too? And let me just say ... DAYUM! It has absolutely improved my results, as demonstrated by lower BESS scores.

Example: I reprofiled and sharpened my PM2 (Maxamet) on stones today. Started with DMT xtra course, then Venev 240 and 400. After stropping with 3 and .5 micron diamonds, the best I could muster was a 110 BESS reading. Took it back to the 400 Venev and then repeated the stropping process, but this time doing the denim strop first. BESS reading after the denim: 80! Certainly there are folks who can do better than that, but it's a damned good result for me. Stropping on diamonds actually raised the BESS reading, but it came right back to 80 after stropping on loaded denim again. I've had similar results with every knife I tried. I think I'm going to save a lot of money on diamond paste!

The strop is just a piece of denim I cut out of an old pair of jeans -- about 4" wide by 12" long. Loaded it with Flitz (not too much) in the middle 8". Taped one end to table top with duct tape and put a 3" spring clip on the bottom to use as a handle. 5 or 6 passes on the semi-taught denim is all it takes, using medium pressure.

If you haven't tried it, give a try!
 
I also found denim strops with polishing compound to be very good. I've favored them over leather strops for a few years now. My own favorite is used with white rouge buffing compound (stick form), which can be loaded very densely on the denim. That makes for an extremely fast polishing solution, if you're aiming for that as a finish. A densely-loaded denim strop can also convex very quickly, while simulaneously polishing. A thin blade with acute edge geometry and a polished convex behind the edge is a wonderful slicer. A denim strop was born for that.
 
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