These are 'diamond pasted balsa strops', and they're all the rage with some people in the straight razor community. Basically a flat piece of balsa wood with diamond paste rubbed in. It's used like a very finely abrasive pre-strop, before stropping on leather, and it makes things very sharp indeed:
Diamond paste I understand is also used for mirror finishes on knives. Which I assume is done by hand - just rubbing the paste in with your finger or a bit of cloth or something? Though I think if I did that on a clad knife then it's going to start mirror-polishing the soft steel?
But on a balsa strop it doesn't seem to; I don't know if this is because of the wood, or something else, but it seemed to preserve a kasumi finish from the stone, while seriously brightening the core steel to mirror. Balsa wood also has some give to it, so it was hitting slight low spots that a stone wouldn't.
I only tried this very quickly last night using 0.1 u paste, but the results seemed quite promising I think. The scratches here are just from the previous stone, and the hard steel would have gone full mirror if I'd used a finer stone before or perhaps a progression of pastes. So I'm going to have more of a play around with it later. I've made up another piece of balsa with 0.25 u to use too.
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So... anybody else use diamond paste for polishes, with or without a balsa strop? Any tips?
Diamond paste I understand is also used for mirror finishes on knives. Which I assume is done by hand - just rubbing the paste in with your finger or a bit of cloth or something? Though I think if I did that on a clad knife then it's going to start mirror-polishing the soft steel?
But on a balsa strop it doesn't seem to; I don't know if this is because of the wood, or something else, but it seemed to preserve a kasumi finish from the stone, while seriously brightening the core steel to mirror. Balsa wood also has some give to it, so it was hitting slight low spots that a stone wouldn't.
I only tried this very quickly last night using 0.1 u paste, but the results seemed quite promising I think. The scratches here are just from the previous stone, and the hard steel would have gone full mirror if I'd used a finer stone before or perhaps a progression of pastes. So I'm going to have more of a play around with it later. I've made up another piece of balsa with 0.25 u to use too.
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So... anybody else use diamond paste for polishes, with or without a balsa strop? Any tips?
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