beginner strop kit recommendations

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labor of love

labor of love

Cowboys from Hell
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ive searched this forum and I havent really found much in the way of beginner strop kits or advice for a basic set up. Im sure Ive overlooked it as Im sure this subject has to have come up before. What do you guys recommend for a beginner strop kit or whats a good set up for a first timer? thanks
 
All you need is Dave's Strop kit, but I'm not seeing it on his web store...
 
Dave's kit would be choice #1. PM Dave to find out what happened his kit. He may have just omitted it by mistake getting his store back in order. The other choice is ************ Strop Kit from C K T G.
 
thanks. is there a preferred strop material to use? or a favorite 2-3 strops to use in conjuction? how do you decide which micron spray to use?
 
I don't know about Dave's kit, sorry about that. I would suggest split leather with Cr2O3 and newspaper with a lot of black ink. With some steels balsa or cedar work very well. For further refinement you may consider plain leather. It's all about finding a combination of steel, medium and compound.
 
Yeah. Dave's strop...

After that, there are a bunch of places that sell a decent leather strop. Aside from CKTG, there's Sharpening Supplies, Phoenix Knifehouse. 99 even made a balsa strop with a piece of wood and backed it with a mag strip. You can just stick that on any metal surface, like a DMT or something. You can even just get a 3x3x12 block of balsa and charge a side with an abrasive of your choice. You can also use hard felt. Easy. :) Less give is better, that's all.
 
labor of love said:
any idea what was in the kit? i just buy everthing separately.
Click to expand...

You probably couldn't assemble everthing separately because Dave had the strops sized to fit the base.

The kit had a lacewood base with a magnetic sheet glued to it, a bottle of .25 micron diamond spray, and two strops - one leather, one felt - glued to thin steel so that they could be held in place by the base.

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Here's another view of the kit:

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And the stropping material:

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The leather is mounted to metal plates which eliminate curling, a definite issue with The ************ product:

389f1336.jpg
 
If you are just looking for ultra cheap and get the job done, the most important thing to remember is that the act of stropping on loaded media is FAR more important than WHAT media you are stropping on.

What I'm saying is, if you finish your sharpening, and then strop on a paper bag laid over a belt, there will be results. The first thing I ever did to strop was took my tojiro dp off the one stone I had--a Shapton Pro 2k--and ripped off the flap of a carboard box. Then I stropped on it like 30 times a side, alternating(yes I was counting strokes...cause I didn't know what else to do!). I knew I had to get a proper strop after that, the change was immediately noticeable.

So heres what you do:
Go to a hobby/craft shop, and buy a piece of balsa wood and tooling leather. Buy some diamond spray, or whatever you can afford(I got a bottle of .5 micron CrO paste) and cut the balsa to match the size of whatever base you have on hand, then glue the leather to it, press some books on it or something.

Boom. Strop.
 
Salty had a nice homemade 4-sided strop setup and even a video explanation... Cant find the link right now...

My favorite all-round abrasive is dave's .25micron poly-diamond.
 
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