Leather strop: which side up?
Welcome! / Forums / General Woodworking Discussions / Tools and Tool Maintenance/Restoration / Leather strop: which side up?
Tagged: leather strop
- This topic has 20 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 10 months ago by RD CHINOY.
-
AuthorPosts
-
5 March 2015 at 10:59 am #125268
have you watched this
https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com/2013/11/gouge-sharpening/Hi Eddy,
Thanks. Yes, I have. If fact that’s where I saw Joseph’s leather flesh side up and started wondering.
My gouge seems to cut only if I come in at a very high angle. I believe I’m supposed to put a slight “back bevel” on the inside to fix this. (I have an out-channel gouge.)
Also, it doesn’t cut well cross-grain. It just tears the wood. I’m interpreting this to mean I just don’t have a sharp enough edge. It’s an old used gouge, so I’m wondering if I need to polish the inside better.
It’s my first try. I hope to try again tonight.
I remember seeing Paul demonstrating the “figure 8” when sharpening a gouge. Now I cannot find the video. Am I making this up? Can someone point out to me which video it was?
Check out a video by Mary May on YouTube for some good advice on sharpening a gouge. http://youtu.be/i5iEhUoSi8Q
I don’t know if the discussion has maybe already come to a conclusion, but I would still like to add that the kind of leather you use makes a big difference. I have used vegetable-tanned goat leather to start with. That stuff is very thin, but robust. You can almost feel the substrate material through it. The problem I had with it, was the high friction I got with the compound on (worse on the smooth side). In general I find a rougher and harder piece of leather slightly better, because the blades won’t stick so much with the compound on there. Most varieties of combound I’ve used were very soft and therefore I changed to vegetable-tanned cow-leather and stuck it with some stronger adhesive. I now got less sticking of the blades to the strop. I would still like to try sheep leather. It is about as thin as the goat leather, but harder for all I know. I’ve heard people recommend it for polishing knives and so. I’ve had the experience with the harder polishing compounds the abrasion is a bit slower, but I get no sticking on any kind of leather I’ve tried. I find stropping on wood also gets very good results, but it is not so efficient and you might need to clean off the strop more often.
I just bought some horse butt leather. Tools for Working Wood sells it for about $22USD I think. It’s really thick and stiff which is supposed to prevent dubbing. For 10 years I used an ordinary cowhide leather with green Lee Valley compound following an 8,000 grit diamond plate with excellent results. That was used smooth side up I believe. I’ve also tried compound on plywood and MDF with good results. I’ve even tried bare basswood following the strop just as an experiment. All of this taught me what I learned previously in Ron Hocks outstanding book, which is that honing is merely the process of using an increasingly fine abrasive to obliterate the scratches of the previous abrasive. Reading this book is a big part of what made honing click in my mind so I highly recommend it. Understanding the theory was critical for me to really becoming an outstanding sharpener. Once I learned sharpening theory, I could (and have) successfully sharpened everything from axes to apokeshaves and from chainsaws to card scrapers. Wrap your head around the theory and you will understand when you can use the leather rough side up with compound or smooth side up without. I would use the former coming from a 1200-4000 grit stone, but the latter when my final stone was 8000 or above. Best of all, test for yourself and have fun. Then you will become a subject matter expert and a honing guru.
Old post but its what brought me here.
Looks like there is no clean answer so I will continue to do what I have been doing all this time which is use both sides. Flesh side up for step one and fine side up for final step.But what Info I am looking for is How to iron the leather what temp and should it be damp or dry.
I know profesional Strop makers do use a Hot iron to smoothen the lather.
I do Iron my leather. At a wool setting on my Iron. -
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.