Hey! Today is my first day learning about sharpening knives. Never heard of burr or strop before. Your video is simply amazing! I appreciate it a bunch, thanks!!
Thanks for the help. Finally sharpened my first knife and even cut my arm hair😂. I’m a single momma of 2 sons and we all love to collect knives. But…. My daddy tried to teach me when I was a girl and of course I didn’t care I would always just bring it to him to sharpen. Now he’s gone and I’m mom and dad. So I’m getting closer to being able to pass it down to my sons!!!’ Woooohoooo
First, you have my respect for being a single parent!!! It's the hardest job that you will love. Props!!! If you are ever in east Tennessee, you, and the boys, should check out Smoky Mountain Knife Works. It is a HUGE store with any knife that you can ever want. Great selection and friendly staff. They have a website also. Best wishes to you and the boys!!!
This is a good day. That is the exact model of the Manix2 I am currently holding in my hands, trying to get it to that edge. Wow, very nice. Glad I found your channel. Subbed. It is so nice outside. I'm out enjoying the weather on my porch and trying to improve my sharpening skills. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Much appreciated. Have a nice day!
When i strop my knives i put a lot of pressure (DLT Trading strop and Bark river white and black compound). Like that it put a micro convex edge witch i prefer than V edge. But it's better to grind down the shoulder of the edge by sharpening,it help to make a micro convex edge.
I got some horsehide veggy tanned leather . ( I was told this is best) Should I use the shallow/super soft firm side or the more fuzzy side? or 1 of each? Should I leave one un touched and 1 compound? ALL my knives are convex from my work sharp belt system. ANY info would be great Semper Fi
+BOOSTEDLASER The soft fuzzy side up is great for general purpose stropping. load that one up with compound. The hard smooth side is good for finishing touches. A lot of guys don't even put compound on that side. Most people find the soft fuzzy side sufficient and skip the other side but that is up to you. Thanks for watching!
I used a knives plus strop for a long time, after about a year of constant use I decided to completely clean the pre-loaded compound from the strop and add .5 diamond spray from chef knives to go, holy shit for lack of better terms, it's incredible the edge I'm getting, I get a hair whittling toothy edge with it, most of the time I could get one or the other, but with the spray I can get both, when you feel the edge for sharpness it feels sticky, that's the micro serrations the strop leaves, if you have an old knives plus strop and you're thinking about scrapping it, give the spray a try after cleaning the old compound from it.
Did you get the ryobi compounds? And if so was it the soft metals or hard metals set?? I can't seem to find green! What would I use besides green if not available?
ı dont have strop but ı use my leather belt on a tree branch and it is auto find their angle because of free floating position i think. İs it right or tottaly wrong ? Sry for bad eng...
not one person in a thousand knows whats taking place when stropping with different strops of different hardness. The strop should be done barely 3 or 4 strokes with a very slight tilt so that the strop is in fact hitting the fresh virgin cutting edge to remove the burr. If a person strops too much--thinking they are sharpening the knife they are actually microscopically rounding off the cutting edge into an egg shaped pointed ellipse because of "the waterfall effect".. what that is if you visualize a soft strop material such as soft leather or fabric being drawn across the edge if you are getting the edge actually you have a waterfall of material that at the micro true edge is MUCH more of an angle sort of rounding the edge. this in fact happens as you can tell by stropping alot. When freshly sharpened with a fine stone the knife will actually cut into a tomatoe test BETTER--NOT WORSE--because of the micro saw edge effect. If you over strop the knife the edge will get TOO POLISHED AND ROUNDED because of the waterfall effect. When you go back to the tomatoe you will find the knife will not begin the cut as well and though sharp--you will wonder where you went wrong.. Where you went wrong is over polishing the edge. I prefer a good solid strop such as cardboard charged with rouge. Then after a cautious sharpen on a fine stone pull it backwards TWO OR THREE times with almost no pressure to deburr and MICRO POLISH THE SAW EDGES that are barely a few atoms wide.. I will be doing a video with drawings. DO NOT OVER LAP..
No, bare leather doesn't work at all. That's the biggest myth on UA-cam. If it worked the same, no one would buy expensive stropping compound. Bre leather doesn't work at all.
@@jamesaritchie1, you might want to tell that to barbers who've used the big, long leather strops, for decade upon decade, to sharpen their razors. Too, were that true, using gloss cardboard or a glossy catalog page would do nothing. I turn plastic and the end product cannot be torched. As such, I have to rely on polishing by way of mechanical means. To that end and in addition to compounds (see footnote), I use cardboard, home made compounds, commercial compounds and so on. While things like cardboard or raw leather do not work as fast as when charged with compound, they do work.
Do you need to reapply any compound to the stropblock? In their video they said you can recondition with olive oil but didnt say whether or not to reapply compound.
a7x4lrev The strop as it comes will last you quite a while without having to reapply compound. If you recondition it with oil, I would apply a small amount after it has completely dried.
@@EkimKnives, except that non-hardening oils, like motor oil, 3-In-One and mineral oils do not dry. Instead, they wick to the next dry point in the wood, leather or whatever absorbent surface to which it's applied. Eventually, and as more oil is applied, the oil would saturate the material. Some of my home made "compounds" use non-hardening oil. They include chromium oxide mixed with mineral oil (a little drop'll do ya).
Just keep off the black (easier said than done, but....). For some applications, I put a piece of blue painter's tape along the edge. The tape does not have to be up to the edge. In fact, if it were, you couldn't reach it, as you make your passes. A more coarse example would be when I polish a round-over I put on a pieces of granite - I put a pieces of duct tape along the edge to avoid touching the already polished part and dulling it, as I work through diamond grits.
By the time you get to the stropping stage, you shouldn't have a burr on your edge - that should have been taken off by your finer stones. Stropping is like a final polish on the edge
Steels are for straightening burrs, if you have a lippy bur it can actually rip up and cut the leather apart, so you want to remove or straighten the burr before moving onto stropping. That's just from my personal experence, and ruining tons of leather strops and home made leather blocks.
Jwy321 It can remove very small burrs and it helps to smooth out the rough apex a stone can leave behind. Think of it this way, a stone will leave microscopic serrations on the cutting edge. The strop will make the transition between these tiny little teeth smoother which will result in a cleaner cut and a sharper edge. I hope that helps explain it. Thanks for watching!
Depending on how much stropping is done it will convex the edge very slightly. Aggressive stropping or way too much can convex it far more. We are of course talking on a very small scale here.
I can’t believe it! Every single word this guy says is correct. Guys you have to strop. Most UA-cam videos are just wrong. Watch this one several times. Every word is right on how to do it and what it does to your edge.
I'm not a hard user on my knives, but I can offer a little insight from my experience. It seems fairly easy to sharpen and has good rust resistance. I've used it for food-prep and had it in my pocket while running with no discoloration. It does seem to be a softer steel; most of the scratches on my Manix 2 blade came from the wiry scrub part of a sponge while washing it. That will turn some people off, but I dig the way the light plays off of it and the softness probably helps with the ease of sharpening. I might compare it to 8CR13MOV, which isn't a bad steel. I think it's more important to get it in hand if you haven't done so already. Some people complain about the Lightweight feeling like a "lego knife" and it being riveted instead of torx-bits constructed. The edges of the handle are more blocky compared to something like an Endura, and that can irritate people. That being said, I enjoy mine quite a bit. If it feels right in your hand, I say go for it.
At some point in my life I'd like to own a few decent knives, however before I do I want to be able to sharpen them properly, so I've been using some relatively cheap knives to learn on. Intermittently over the past couple of years I've looked at dozens of videos and guides about sharpening and stropping. I've spent hours (on a couple of occasions the best part of a day) trying to sharpen my knives. I just can't seem to get good results. It's so frustrating it makes me want to kill someone but I can't because my knives aren't sharp. Just kidding... they'd probably be sharp enough to kill someone. Again, just kidding, I have no intention of killing anyone.
For me, the key solution was, after establishing what angle I wanted, repeating it in the course of sharpening. Tilting the stone even a degree would set me back. Find a way to move at the same angle with each pass and you'll be off and running. Now, even my kitchen knives can push cut (no sawing) paper. It was a few months from good edges my wife and I were talking about thinking something was wrong with the potatoes we were cutting, because the knives went through them so easily. The only caveat to the above is, a knife without a polished edge may grip a tomato better for cutting.
Haven't you seen the movie "Walk Hard"? He accidentally cuts his brother in half with a machete. But seriously, a razor edge is dangerous on a utility blade of that type. It's meant to be swung around, sometimes in tight areas. Edge type (How sharp/angle of edge) totally depends upon the intended use. Dangerous to lead new knife aficionado's down the wrong path.
Glaring Eagle more people are cut seriously with a dull blade than with good sharp blades. BTW you can't use a scene from a movie since that was written into the script oh and it is the person's responsibility to use tools safely so you can't blame the knife, machete, saw blade, lawnmower blade, or whatever if someone gets hurt with them... Just saying...
Hey! Today is my first day learning about sharpening knives. Never heard of burr or strop before. Your video is simply amazing! I appreciate it a bunch, thanks!!
Thanks for the help. Finally sharpened my first knife and even cut my arm hair😂. I’m a single momma of 2 sons and we all love to collect knives. But…. My daddy tried to teach me when I was a girl and of course I didn’t care I would always just bring it to him to sharpen. Now he’s gone and I’m mom and dad. So I’m getting closer to being able to pass it down to my sons!!!’ Woooohoooo
First, you have my respect for being a single parent!!! It's the hardest job that you will love. Props!!!
If you are ever in east Tennessee, you, and the boys, should check out Smoky Mountain Knife Works. It is a HUGE store with any knife that you can ever want. Great selection and friendly staff. They have a website also.
Best wishes to you and the boys!!!
I just ordered the stropman.. I'm new to knife sharpening. Thanks for the tips..
This is a good day. That is the exact model of the Manix2 I am currently holding in my hands, trying to get it to that edge. Wow, very nice. Glad I found your channel. Subbed. It is so nice outside. I'm out enjoying the weather on my porch and trying to improve my sharpening skills. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Much appreciated. Have a nice day!
great video
i already knew how to strop but your video gave me a few tips that i didnt already know, also was very enjoyable to watch
I’ve rekindled my interest in sharpening. This is, at least, one of the best vids on stropping. Thanks
This is an old post but I just ordered the strop because of your great review. Well done
When i strop my knives i put a lot of pressure (DLT Trading strop and Bark river white and black compound).
Like that it put a micro convex edge witch i prefer than V edge.
But it's better to grind down the shoulder of the edge by sharpening,it help to make a micro convex edge.
This took me several days to come up with and if it does not hit you right away don't feel bad but ekim is Mike backwards #mindblown !
...aHaH
Really great video! It gave me everything I was looking for. Thanks for the help mate. Also very nice knife :)
Great video. I learned a lot from it.
In a pinch, you can make strops from MDF. It will take a [compound] charge too. I run a couple round ones on my drill press.
Great video a strop make a world of difference
How does the knife sharpen differently if the green compound is on, oh say, cardboard versus leather?
The Spydercro Para 2&3 are my favorite knives. There’s nothin better
Does the grind make any difference when stropping
Thanks for the education
I got some horsehide veggy tanned leather . ( I was told this is best)
Should I use the shallow/super soft firm side or the more fuzzy side? or 1 of each?
Should I leave one un touched and 1 compound?
ALL my knives are convex from my work sharp belt system.
ANY info would be great
Semper Fi
+BOOSTEDLASER The soft fuzzy side up is great for general purpose stropping. load that one up with compound. The hard smooth side is good for finishing touches. A lot of guys don't even put compound on that side. Most people find the soft fuzzy side sufficient and skip the other side but that is up to you. Thanks for watching!
I used a knives plus strop for a long time, after about a year of constant use I decided to completely clean the pre-loaded compound from the strop and add .5 diamond spray from chef knives to go, holy shit for lack of better terms, it's incredible the edge I'm getting, I get a hair whittling toothy edge with it, most of the time I could get one or the other, but with the spray I can get both, when you feel the edge for sharpness it feels sticky, that's the micro serrations the strop leaves, if you have an old knives plus strop and you're thinking about scrapping it, give the spray a try after cleaning the old compound from it.
Good video thank you!
What compound do they use lol, you can’t even see the leather!
Did you get the ryobi compounds? And if so was it the soft metals or hard metals set?? I can't seem to find green! What would I use besides green if not available?
Look up chromium oxide compounds.
My machete edge is so bad
- can’t hurt -
polish adds sharpness.
--- A haiku.
Very nice
Thanks Jim Skelton
Would stropping remove a slight burr?
Can I add compound on a strop belt.
ı dont have strop but ı use my leather belt on a tree branch and it is auto find their angle because of free floating position i think. İs it right or tottaly wrong ? Sry for bad eng...
You are doing it right.
English is understandable, so no need to apologize.
Another great tutorial - which brand chromium oxide bar do you highly recommend?
Thanks
not one person in a thousand knows whats taking place when stropping with different strops of different hardness. The strop should be done barely 3 or 4 strokes with a very slight tilt so that the strop is in fact hitting the fresh virgin cutting edge to remove the burr. If a person strops too much--thinking they are sharpening the knife they are actually microscopically rounding off the cutting edge into an egg shaped pointed ellipse because of "the waterfall effect".. what that is if you visualize a soft strop material such as soft leather or fabric being drawn across the edge if you are getting the edge actually you have a waterfall of material that at the micro true edge is MUCH more of an angle sort of rounding the edge. this in fact happens as you can tell by stropping alot. When freshly sharpened with a fine stone the knife will actually cut into a tomatoe test BETTER--NOT WORSE--because of the micro saw edge effect. If you over strop the knife the edge will get TOO POLISHED AND ROUNDED because of the waterfall effect. When you go back to the tomatoe you will find the knife will not begin the cut as well and though sharp--you will wonder where you went wrong.. Where you went wrong is over polishing the edge. I prefer a good solid strop such as cardboard charged with rouge. Then after a cautious sharpen on a fine stone pull it backwards TWO OR THREE times with almost no pressure to deburr and MICRO POLISH THE SAW EDGES that are barely a few atoms wide.. I will be doing a video with drawings. DO NOT OVER LAP..
Great video! Thank you. Wish I was good at it lol
what do you use to polish the rest of the blade?
I have that same spyderco that thing is shinier than how mine came from factory haha
yes polish cloth.. or 5000 grit wer/dry..
If you don't want to spend the money on a strop and compound, could I just use something like my belt to strop my knives?
+Evan Ogburn That's what i do, it works the same
kevin lin Ok cool
No, bare leather doesn't work at all. That's the biggest myth on UA-cam. If it worked the same, no one would buy expensive stropping compound. Bre leather doesn't work at all.
Evan Ogburn it works aight, but if you have the money to buy a real strop/compound I would really recommend it bc its way better than bare leather
@@jamesaritchie1, you might want to tell that to barbers who've used the big, long leather strops, for decade upon decade, to sharpen their razors.
Too, were that true, using gloss cardboard or a glossy catalog page would do nothing.
I turn plastic and the end product cannot be torched. As such, I have to rely on polishing by way of mechanical means. To that end and in addition to compounds (see footnote), I use cardboard, home made compounds, commercial compounds and so on.
While things like cardboard or raw leather do not work as fast as when charged with compound, they do work.
Do you need to reapply any compound to the stropblock? In their video they said you can recondition with olive oil but didnt say whether or not to reapply compound.
a7x4lrev The strop as it comes will last you quite a while without having to reapply compound. If you recondition it with oil, I would apply a small amount after it has completely dried.
Cool thanks!
Azarath 0
@@EkimKnives, except that non-hardening oils, like motor oil, 3-In-One and mineral oils do not dry. Instead, they wick to the next dry point in the wood, leather or whatever absorbent surface to which it's applied. Eventually, and as more oil is applied, the oil would saturate the material.
Some of my home made "compounds" use non-hardening oil. They include chromium oxide mixed with mineral oil (a little drop'll do ya).
Can you strop a black blade without ruining the coating?
all day..
Thanks...........
Just keep off the black (easier said than done, but....). For some applications, I put a piece of blue painter's tape along the edge.
The tape does not have to be up to the edge. In fact, if it were, you couldn't reach it, as you make your passes.
A more coarse example would be when I polish a round-over I put on a pieces of granite - I put a pieces of duct tape along the edge to avoid touching the already polished part and dulling it, as I work through diamond grits.
More strop and knife sharpening vids please
oh don't worry I have a few ideas in my head for new videos on that very topic.
👍
I do like to load my strops up with compound. 🤷🏼♂️ different strokes for different folks. ( pun intended) 😂
...AND you're using a spyderco.. nice
i thought the strop makes the burr straight
I thought stropping removed the burr.
By the time you get to the stropping stage, you shouldn't have a burr on your edge - that should have been taken off by your finer stones. Stropping is like a final polish on the edge
Steels are for straightening burrs, if you have a lippy bur it can actually rip up and cut the leather apart, so you want to remove or straighten the burr before moving onto stropping. That's just from my personal experence, and ruining tons of leather strops and home made leather blocks.
so is a strop for removing burs or can you use it just for sharpening?
Jwy321 It can remove very small burrs and it helps to smooth out the rough apex a stone can leave behind. Think of it this way, a stone will leave microscopic serrations on the cutting edge. The strop will make the transition between these tiny little teeth smoother which will result in a cleaner cut and a sharper edge. I hope that helps explain it. Thanks for watching!
thanks for clarification!!
EKIM1428 will stropping always lead to a more convex edge?
Depending on how much stropping is done it will convex the edge very slightly. Aggressive stropping or way too much can convex it far more. We are of course talking on a very small scale here.
I can’t believe it! Every single word this guy says is correct. Guys you have to strop. Most UA-cam videos are just wrong. Watch this one several times. Every word is right on how to do it and what it does to your edge.
I know it's a spyderco but what kind is it
+john doe Its a manix 2 light weight. Great knife.
EKIM1428 that's what I thought it was
I have the regular manix2, love it so amazing.
I'm not a hard user on my knives, but I can offer a little insight from my experience.
It seems fairly easy to sharpen and has good rust resistance. I've used it for food-prep and had it in my pocket while running with no discoloration. It does seem to be a softer steel; most of the scratches on my Manix 2 blade came from the wiry scrub part of a sponge while washing it. That will turn some people off, but I dig the way the light plays off of it and the softness probably helps with the ease of sharpening. I might compare it to 8CR13MOV, which isn't a bad steel.
I think it's more important to get it in hand if you haven't done so already. Some people complain about the Lightweight feeling like a "lego knife" and it being riveted instead of torx-bits constructed. The edges of the handle are more blocky compared to something like an Endura, and that can irritate people.
That being said, I enjoy mine quite a bit. If it feels right in your hand, I say go for it.
Cool.
S30V's nice steel, but I've had it rust on me in ways that BD1 and 8CR13MOV have not. Crazy, right?
At some point in my life I'd like to own a few decent knives, however before I do I want to be able to sharpen them properly, so I've been using some relatively cheap knives to learn on.
Intermittently over the past couple of years I've looked at dozens of videos and guides about sharpening and stropping. I've spent hours (on a couple of occasions the best part of a day) trying to sharpen my knives. I just can't seem to get good results.
It's so frustrating it makes me want to kill someone but I can't because my knives aren't sharp. Just kidding... they'd probably be sharp enough to kill someone. Again, just kidding, I have no intention of killing anyone.
Fool me twice.
For me, the key solution was, after establishing what angle I wanted, repeating it in the course of sharpening. Tilting the stone even a degree would set me back.
Find a way to move at the same angle with each pass and you'll be off and running. Now, even my kitchen knives can push cut (no sawing) paper. It was a few months from good edges my wife and I were talking about thinking something was wrong with the potatoes we were cutting, because the knives went through them so easily.
The only caveat to the above is, a knife without a polished edge may grip a tomato better for cutting.
"I'm certainly not an expert at this."
*stops video and looks for an expert to learn from
this is very dorky
why bother spending all this time on this?
Haven't you seen the movie "Walk Hard"? He accidentally cuts his brother in half with a machete. But seriously, a razor edge is dangerous on a utility blade of that type. It's meant to be swung around, sometimes in tight areas. Edge type (How sharp/angle of edge) totally depends upon the intended use. Dangerous to lead new knife aficionado's down the wrong path.
Glaring Eagle more people are cut seriously with a dull blade than with good sharp blades. BTW you can't use a scene from a movie since that was written into the script oh and it is the person's responsibility to use tools safely so you can't blame the knife, machete, saw blade, lawnmower blade, or whatever if someone gets hurt with them... Just saying...
Go to the 3:00 mark if you want to bypass a whole lot of needless chatter.