Leather sharpening?

Re: Leather sharpening?

Wiley Horne--Glendora CA

>Hi Davy,

My 2 cents: Leather strops have their uses, particularly for touchup to restore the keenest edge when you're in the middle of a work session. Even there, though, I have found it good to work the back of the blade (chisel, for example) on a hard, flat stone so it doesn't get rolled over at the edge.

A leather strop will round the edge over, how fast depends on a lot of things--the grit you're using and the angle the blade is held at. But even at best, it will still round the edge. Even quarter micron diamond on a leather strop will round the edge a little, and I find I need to go back to the stones at the end of a project and reset the bevels.

Leather strops are really great for the inside curves on gouges IME.

However, you eventually have to go back to the stones (or equivalent) to restore bevels, so I doubt--and this is just my experience, I'm no authority--that one could use leather strops exclusively with success.

Wiley

There's a cheaper alternative

Bruce, a MN Galoot

>as cheap as leather is. Grab a piece of poplar, pine, maple, etc., from your scrap bin and plane it flat. Rub your compound on it, and voila! you have a strap that won't dub (round over) the edge. Carvers do it all the time and no one has sharper tools than carvers.

Bruce

abrasive substrate selection

Bill Tindall, E. TN

>We have been experimenting with cast iron for an abrasive substrate, and we have looked at wood and the copper side of circuit boards.

The most important factor is how deformable the substrate is. In this regard leather is exceptionally poor in cases where it is important to keep something flat. Oh the other hand, leather will deform enough that it will hone even a fairly unflat surface. And, slightly rounding bevels to result in a convex edge could be desirable. At least one knife maker regards leather as too deformable even when a convex edge is desirable.

We found that abrasives on wood cut finer than the same size on cast iron, probably because the particles imbed more on the wood ( a guess). Also it took considerbly more abrasive to charge the wood. Neither of these factors suggest that wood is inferior, just different. At least in my hands, the wood surface was not quite as flat as the surface ground cast iron, but that could be my planning technique. The circuit boards show some promise but I have not yet learned to use them.