Reply To: Paul's hammer trick for flattening irons / blades
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@ed — hand-forged? Very cool! It certainly doesn’t rule out an issue during manufacturing. If, as you mentioned, the blade has no true curve, but instead the thickness grows and wanes causing a belly, that would also be consistent with imperfections in the manufacturing process.
Flattening backs can be so much work that it drove me to buy LN / LV products, with their perfectly-lapped backs. It’s odd that a manufacturer with such a great reputation as Clifton would produce so flawed a blade, I wonder if you just got the one bad one that slipped by QC or if it’s been through some accident (previous owner dropped it from a great height?).
My strop will also cause scratches if I don’t take care of it. I use it so much that it never leaves my bench, so it gets sawdust on it, small bits of wood, whatever it picks up from the bench, and of course plenty of metal from the various tools I have stropped. I therefore clean it regularly. At the very least I’ll rub it vigorously with a clean cloth once every handful of uses, but once every several dozen uses or so I’ll scrape it (with the long side of a chisel, for example) to get rid of clumped-up bits of compound and then re-charge it with fresh compound.