Making a Strop?

[Romey]

'Aluminum Oxide' is generally a wood intended grit unless at the very coursest grits and 'Silicon Carbide is intended for harder things such as metals ect. I get mine from autobody repair place as body men use wet/dry sometimes on up to 2500 grit, plenty for most people, actually 600 grit is plenty for most as it leaves a more toothy edge which is what i prefer for leather, cardboard or other fiberous materials. I wrote the articles with the mindset of giving the reasoning and not a exact how to so folks could figure out what works best for THEM,but I have had alot of ppl email and needing more detail apparently so thats why the third has taken so long.I forgot, Norton is very good, I prefer 3m but either brand of wet/dry will do exactly what you want it to do.

[CitizenKate]

This is exactly what I would have said. Thanks for saving me the typing, Marlon.

Kate

I know it goes against everything we've learned over the years, but what happens is the leather will give, because it's soft, and you will eventually round the corners of your blade. In talking with Peter Main, he stresses to never strop on a piece of leather. He places his rouge on a piece of Crescent illustration board. I was using a piece of manilla folder rubber cemented to my strop board (made from mdf) and he said that was fine. In some books they'll tell you to strop on a business card. That's the right idea, it's just better to strop with a few long strokes than a lot of short strokes. You have a tendecy to rock the stroke if it's really short.

[Rawhide]

Romney,

Thanks for identifying the difference in the wet dry. I went and bought the grey wet dry from the auto parts store. I still used the black 800 grit, but for the 1200 & 2000 I used the grey paper.

Marlon

[Romey]

No problem. Sounds like you got the right stuff, To make a simple strop for leather workers, being most everyone has a marble slab of some sort, one can use spray adhesine on the paper, stick it to your slab do your stropping and peel it back off. MOST spray adhesives leave little to no gunk or if so its easy to clean up. As for rolling the rounding the eage with a leather strap yes you will if its not hard leather, There is more kinda of leather then just soft vegtan. I had some saddle billet blanks rolled up for a long time that never got used and thats what some of my strops are made from, they are hard and thick. Some others is thinchap leather. Just exsperiment most all has scrap this or that laying around, charge it with green compound and try it.