Stropping Leather Grades

Unbreakable

Unbreakable

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Sep 21, 2002
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Hi all. I have taken to making strops on my own rather than buying them... not a very hard task. But I was wondering if different grades of leather perform differently when mized with different grades of load material. For instance the difference between a heavy rigid piece of say horse belly Vs a thin soft piece of Kangaroo hide. Taking that into consideration... which would work best with what grade of load material... would you want the .25 micron diamond paste in the stiffer hide or would it be of better use in the softer? I have made a few strops out of Kangaroo hide and they have done wonderful with flitz in them. But I ordered some diamond paste and some Green Compound and want to know what grade of leather to load them into for best results. Thanks.
 
Soft, hard, rough, smooth...I think it depends on how your knife was sharpened (convex or flat bevel) and how exactly you use the strop.
 
From my experience the leather only acts as a matrix to hold the compound so it doesn't make a lot of difference what leather you use - it's the compound doing the work. You can use the paper back of a legal pad and it will work just as well as any leather.
 
wouldn't it make sense to assume the matrix may change the way the compund acts thought... for instance a stiffer more dense leather with less give may allowed the compund to be more aggressive while the softer material more gentle? I don't know if this is true but it seems reasonable. I'm guessing that even if this is true... it's splitting hairs and isn't going to make that much of a difference.
 
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