Reply To: Sharpening
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Mark, polishing is sharpening. The strop and honing compound is abrading the steel just as you do with 250 grit sandpaper, but chromium oxide honing compound (or whatever you choose) is about the equivalent of 16,000 grit abrasive so it will produce a mirror like finish. You can’t buy sandpaper that I know of greater than about 4,000 grit so we use a strop. What you’re doing is “polishing” out the scratches left on the cutting edge by the 1200 grit diamond stone which is why you hear guys talking about polishing. But yes, that is absolutely sharpening the cutting edge. You can also do that on a 16,000 grit Shapton water stone which is about $150 but you need a diamond lapping stone to go with it to keep it flat. A strop does essentially the same thing but a whole lot cheaper. There are many ways to do this and I think I discovered years ago that there are at least as many ideas about how to sharpen cutting tools as there are woodworkers. Copy what you see Paul doing in his videos for starters. As time goes on, like most of us, you’ll come up with your very own method that works best for you.