Have You Ever Rounded Over an Edge Stropping?

[AHill]

I wonder how barbers avoid a rounded over edge while stropping? A much more acute angle with a two-sided bevel, so you'd think the edge would be more fragile and subject to dubbing vs. a chisel or plane blade's edge.

[wmickley]

I wonder how barbers avoid a rounded over edge while stropping?  A much more acute angle with a two-sided bevel, so you'd think the edge would be more fragile and subject to dubbing vs. a chisel or plane blade's edge.

I have stropped both plane irons and straight razors for more than fifty years. Stropping is an art.

I watched the Suman video referenced by Barry. Suman says that his video would change the way I sharpen. It did not.

Suman appears to be a beginner at planing, beginner at sharpening, beginner at stropping. Sloppy. In his test he takes two hollow ground plane irons and one he sharpens on an 8000 stone and the other on a strop loaded with mystery compound. He sharpens them repeatedly using just the one method for each iron. (The stropped iron never sees a stone again.) More interesting would be whether he could detect a difference between an iron that was stropped after being worked on the stones and one that has not.

[CStan]

I've been stropping irons and chisels since 1923.

A tiny bit of rounding is not only not a problem, but the actual point of the whole exercise.

When accomplished on a buffer, the latest crop of hemorrhoids to take up woodworking call it a "unicorn edge."

[iclark]

I've been stropping irons and chisels since 1923.

A tiny bit of rounding is not only not a problem, but the actual point of the whole exercise.

If that is not a typo, we really need to give you an honorary title.

As for the rounding, that is what I was taught: "tiny" as in it does not touch the work surface before the cutting edge does.

[Derek Cohen]

Actually, it's a wonder that Charlie, at his age, has the strength to type. Yet he is a demon!

I tend to agree with Warren. Sharpening is such a basic skill that everyone has an opinion. Such passion in the writing ... wonderful to be that young and so sure of oneself.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Tony Z]

Sharp is……when you’re working a chisel and you don’t know you cut yourself until you see the red bath on maple that was almost ready for finish but now has a piece that needs replaced.

Many of us have our sharpening done as second nature. Yep we all occasionally roll an edge, but we fix it in a couple of licks.

[CStan]

If that is not a typo, we really need to give you an honorary title.

As for the rounding, that is what I was taught: "tiny" as in it does not touch the work surface before the cutting edge does.

Tongue-in-cheek for the crowd who start almost every post with "I've been doing such and such since .... "

As if anybody gives a $hit, you know?

[hbmcc]

I've only stropped a short time, not a hundred years.

I find it fun to do, and especially for blades that see little more than whiskers or the occasional cardboard box. So far all I see is fine whiskers of finger surface skin when testing the edge. I guess I'm not dubbing.  However, the leather is nearly 3/16" and pretty stiff.

[Steve Hamlin]

I just use talc for stropping, more lubricant than abrasive, and little needed with light enough finishing strokes on a surgical black which maintained with nothing coarser than a lily white itself burnishes more than it abrades.

[ajkoontz]

Two things in WW that I’ve never had success with are stropping and turning a burr on a card scraper. Don’t know why, as both seem fairly straightforward and for most serious WWers are simple tasks. Maybe one day it will all click for me and I’ll reach sharpening nirvana.