GREAT STUFF! Thank you Jake. I have made several stropps now (even made some for by brothers as gifts). I've found I can usually take a sharp knife to razor sharp by stropping AND the occasional stropp to but a better edge back on the knife without removing a bunch of steel. Thanks for the ideas on better compounds AND the warning about applying to much pressure.
Yes, exactly. Often I find a knife doesn't need steel removal sharpening. A good stopping can restore a very nice edge much of the time. Save that steel removal sharpening for when that is the only option.
one pile of good information there. On a full sharpening, I'm now tending towards starting with diamond, then medium and fine grit ceramics and finishing with the strop. All 3 are fast, easy and effective. Great video, glad I tuned in. Thanks for this one
My pleasure, glad you liked the video. Yeah, your system certainly isn't a bad one. i change my sharpening strategy a little depending on the steel. For steel over 60 on the Rockwell C scale I usually just stick with diamond for the whole sharpening process, but for most budget steels my system is a lot like yours.
For those on a budget; hobby/arts & crafts stores sell bags of cut scrap pieces of leather for cheap, and usually various slats of wood too. Thin double sided carpet seam tape can bond the leather to the wood,& it's easy to replace the leather while reusing the wood. I've also seen people use olive/vegetable oil to remove any stropping compound for reapplying, but I'm not sure if it subsequently softens the leather too much. Thanks for the information Jake. I like that plastic sleeve of tiny tubs of various compounds.
Good idea. Those bulk bags do sometimes have pieces big enough for a good strop. I have not used that method to remove stropping compound. When I was first learning to use compound I found it easy to add too much. I use a card scraper (used in woodworking) to carefully remove excessive compound. I usually get it right and don't put on too much, but sometimes it happens. On strops with the suede (flesh) side of the leather I almost never need to remove compound, just add a very tiny bit more after stropping several dozen knives.
Just strop on wood itself. It's clearly and evidently superior substrate. The masses are just obsessed with leather tho and thats what sells. Weirdos want fancy expensive leather just to slop filthy abrasive on it and get it covered in filthy metal swarf. Makes no sense. There's nothing magical about leather. Honestly synthetic materials work much better than leather. But wood like basswood, birch or balsa, is just fine and dandy and the easiest way.
Green stropping compuonds are often chromium oxide, most often 0.3 micron or 0.5 in size (seems 0.3 is more common. Of course, while chromium oxide is naturally green, there can be a lot of other products that have just the green color and are not chromium oxide nor the typical grit size of chromium oxides. Chromium oxide is not too agressive (way less than eg. diamonds). The are the traditional compound that is still very common with razors.
Diamonds need not be "too aggressive", it all depends on their size and the medium where they are suspened. Since making this video several years ago I have gotten into using Gunny Juice and I find the supurb mirror finish that I can get much easier to accomplish with their very fine sub micron size diamonds. I generally begin stropping with 6micron and then end with 0.5micron. Easier and faster (but MORE expensive) than any traditional stropping solution. I had also tried other diamond stropping products in the past too, but none I tested are as good as Gunny Juice.
@@CanadianCuttingEdge Size matters or course, but if you compare say 0.3 micron chromium oxide, 0.25 micron diamond is still more aggressive and the scratch pattern is different. Diamond also seems to remove more material. For utility knives, who cares. For razors it seems to make a difference and one probably prefers plain leather always as a last step. I've not compared 0.1 micron diamond to 0.3 micron chromium oxide with my razors. Perhaps some day when I get curious enough.
Love the video Jake especially that Venev diamond compound set. I’m going to order that set that is unless you want to sell me your lol take care buddy have a wonderful and safe Christmas my friend.
i will be keeping my multi set, but I would be happy to sell some of the other compounds that are in the video - the lip balm sticks or tubs I have too much of the super fine compound, I won't use it all in the rest of my life.
@@CanadianCuttingEdge I think I will take you up on that in the new year if that’s ok. With Christmas fast approaching the Knife life takes a little bit of a back seat to the grand kids..lol. I will touch base in January if that’s cool Jake. Take care buddy.
Love the video. Thank you for some great pointers. If you didn't show your face and I only heard your voice, l would have thought that Jordan Peterson was finally conveying some helpful information.
As a newbie to this whole knife thing, i heard that you get better results from the blue compound compared to the green. What say, Jake? Thanks for sharing.
Yes, blue is "better", in a way... If I had to choose between only the blue or green I would stick with the green, it works well enough for me. Blue is a finer compound than the green. For those who want to to the extra work and get a super perfect polish follow up after the green with the blue. Since I have mostly knives that cost $50 or less the green can do a better job than I need. It's all a question of how perfect you want the edge to be. And you need to go up in grit in many stages. I recommend going up in steps of less than double increase on each step. that goes for sharpening and for polishing. So this means: Start with the coarsest grit you need to get the job started. Say you start at 100grit. I would then go to 150, followed by 240 (it's hard to find a grit that is 50% more than 150) and after that 400, then usually 600, then 1000 ( I often stop there) but some keep going. If you try to jump a few steps you have to work much harder for each grit. For example the scratches left at 100 would take a VERY long time to get rid off if you jump straight to 400grit. It might take 10 minutes. It is much less work and it actually goes faster to take many small steps. Sure it takes more time to change stones but the energy and frustration with the sharpening task is a lot longer. So 2 minutes at each of 3 steps (= 6 minutes) VS 10 minutes between each step. Polishing compound should be seen as just another finer step in the sharpening process instead of being seen as an additional process. You are just sharpening/polishing with finer and finer steps each time. So to sharpen to 1200 and then go to the blue compound is skipping steps, but to sharpen to 1200 and then use the green makes sense. Blue is great stuff, in its proper place. Am I over explaining?
Thank you for this. Had no idea so much existed. I use a Work Sharp with the blade grinder attachment, and the company’s strop belts. There is a leather belt for it. Would you recommend a diamond paste or emulsion that would be a good next step from what I use? Is there a single grit at the diamond level that represents a worthwhile step up (without having to invest in multiple diamond products)? I’d like to start somewhere and see that there’s a benefit there. Any recommendation?
Yes, you can use the same compounds, pastes, and emulsions on the powered belt strops. The big thing is that you have to be very careful on a power strop - put very little pressure on the blade edge or you will end up making the edge worse by stropping instead of better.
There are always a lot more ways of doing things than are shown in any one video. Yes, you could use a drill and a wheel (but not a cloth or fabric buffing wheel, that will actually round over the edge making the knife more dull than when you started), you can look up "stropping with mdf wheel" and find a lot of videos about people using that method. Most of those videos fail to mention how easy it is to overheat the edge of the blade with that method thereby ruining the temper of the heat treatment and actually damaging the blade though. Therefore I don't teach that method myself.
i see that the 8 variety pack is sold out at gritomatic? is that usually the case? any other alternatives for a good starter kit for my strops? and your opinion on strops not attached to a wood board, but on a hangar like in the old cowboy movies?
Check out my video on the Gunny Juice product for stropping, I like that a fair bit better yet. I only found out about Gunny Juice recently - ruclips.net/video/yT0Db1zns2Y/видео.html Gunny Juice costs more, by a fair bit, but it performs a lot better too, much better than I expected, I use it exclusively now.
That same "Sample Pack" from Venev is now $31.50 on Amazon. Yikes - inflation! What do you think about using a 0.5 micron paste as an all-purpose stropping compound? These products are pricey, and I'm just trying to save & simplify. Thanks, Jake - take care...
It's mostly because Venvev is a Russian company and there is a 40% tariff tax on anything from there due to Putin invading Ukraine - this time it's not an inflation thing.
I started out using stuff like half micron for knives, then I got experience and learned what I was doing. There's really no reason to use that fine of an abrasive with a strop. Even using something like 2 or 3 microns, when you're talking about a wood or leather substrate the finish that leaves on steel is clearly and obviously finer than the finest whetstones in the sub micron range. So if a 2 or 3 um diamond article suspended in oil or emulsion or whatever and applied to a substrate of leather or wood is already leaving a finer finish that a
Thanks for sharing your perspective Jeff. For most knives I don't go finer than 6 microns unless I am obsessing over the edge. I also have found using a fine product with a strop requires quite a bit less time and effort to get a polished edge than using super fine stones - in my experience. I have to disagree with the perspective that there are only 3 types of stones though, I could agree that there are three main categories of stones, but you put quotation marks around types, so I cannot be sure what you mean. Perhaps you believe every diamond stones is exactly the same as every other diamond stone and every whetstone is the same as every other whetstone, etc. I would disagree with that. I know the science of what Scott Gunn does with his products because I have had conversations with him and there is nobody doing what he is doing in the knife market. Certainly, one can question if his stuff different/better enough to be worth the premium in price - the answer to that will be subjective. I am a professional knife sharpener and I know from my experiences which products work best for me and which products are the wisest purchases for me in the long term. I don't earn a penny from any of the knife/sharpening product links that I provide (except for Amazon links), so I don't have a financial interest in whether or not people use the products that I suggest.
@@CanadianCuttingEdge A high concentration of 6 um diamond will for sure get you polished up quicker than a lot of ultra fine stones. It depends on the steel but imho Naniwa super stones, especially that 12k is by far the best (mirror) polishing stone on the market... and I've tried everything. I've taken a ZDP-189 edge from a 600 grit to a absolute mirror in a couple minutes with that thing. It's superb. It nearly even worked on getting the factory edge but ultimately there were too many deep scratches and weirdness going on with the bevel. What I was talking about is waterstones and grit ratings. Grit ratings are quite arbitrary, and depends on the product line. I rarely see anyone mention that to newb looking to get their first stones though. What I've come to find is even abrasive particle size doesnt tell the whole story because of how the binding can affect how deep those abrasives cut regardless of their size.
I am not sure what you mean. How would I clean the compound off the leather? to get it all off would be pretty much impossible, but using a heat-gun and a scraper might get most of it off.
A wise man can learn from people who are not simply a copy of their existing way of thinking. A closed minded man simply cannot stand someone doing something the disagree with. I don't store my strops by stacking them like that, I simply needed to put them to the side for a moment to keep the video going forward. I store my strops each in their own plastic bag. I just don't understand why people who disagree with a video spend the time posting a comment, because all it does is make the video more popular in th e algorithm so that more people will see it. They are probably the same people who think hitting the dislike button will make a difference - it does make a difference because the algorithm ups videos that get either a thumbs up or a thumbs down, it doesn't matter, as long as people interact with the video it gets more and more standing.
just came across this video - so useful! I just ordered the venev sampler and some blanks!! thank you!
I glad my video was helpful Michael.
GREAT STUFF! Thank you Jake. I have made several stropps now (even made some for by brothers as gifts). I've found I can usually take a sharp knife to razor sharp by stropping AND the occasional stropp to but a better edge back on the knife without removing a bunch of steel. Thanks for the ideas on better compounds AND the warning about applying to much pressure.
Yes, exactly. Often I find a knife doesn't need steel removal sharpening. A good stopping can restore a very nice edge much of the time. Save that steel removal sharpening for when that is the only option.
Thanks for the great info! Gave me some ideas for making my own strops!
Glad I could help!
one pile of good information there. On a full sharpening, I'm now tending towards starting with diamond, then medium and fine grit ceramics and finishing with the strop. All 3 are fast, easy and effective. Great video, glad I tuned in. Thanks for this one
My pleasure, glad you liked the video.
Yeah, your system certainly isn't a bad one. i change my sharpening strategy a little depending on the steel. For steel over 60 on the Rockwell C scale I usually just stick with diamond for the whole sharpening process, but for most budget steels my system is a lot like yours.
This is extremely useful info that I will put to use. Thank you so much.
Glad it was helpful!
For those on a budget; hobby/arts & crafts stores sell bags of cut scrap pieces of leather for cheap, and usually various slats of wood too. Thin double sided carpet seam tape can bond the leather to the wood,& it's easy to replace the leather while reusing the wood.
I've also seen people use olive/vegetable oil to remove any stropping compound for reapplying, but I'm not sure if it subsequently softens the leather too much.
Thanks for the information Jake. I like that plastic sleeve of tiny tubs of various compounds.
Good idea. Those bulk bags do sometimes have pieces big enough for a good strop.
I have not used that method to remove stropping compound. When I was first learning to use compound I found it easy to add too much. I use a card scraper (used in woodworking) to carefully remove excessive compound. I usually get it right and don't put on too much, but sometimes it happens. On strops with the suede (flesh) side of the leather I almost never need to remove compound, just add a very tiny bit more after stropping several dozen knives.
Just strop on wood itself. It's clearly and evidently superior substrate. The masses are just obsessed with leather tho and thats what sells. Weirdos want fancy expensive leather just to slop filthy abrasive on it and get it covered in filthy metal swarf. Makes no sense. There's nothing magical about leather. Honestly synthetic materials work much better than leather. But wood like basswood, birch or balsa, is just fine and dandy and the easiest way.
Thanks, I like these sharpening videos.
Glad you like them!
Thank you very informative and useful
You are welcome
Hello Jake!This Video is what i am looking for !Thank you !
Glad it was helpful!
Thanks again for a great video!
My pleasure!
I used Gunny juice from Gritomatic, incredible results! You will love it, mirror edges in less time
I'll get some and give it a try.
thank you
really hepfull
Glad it helped!
Green stropping compuonds are often chromium oxide, most often 0.3 micron or 0.5 in size (seems 0.3 is more common. Of course, while chromium oxide is naturally green, there can be a lot of other products that have just the green color and are not chromium oxide nor the typical grit size of chromium oxides.
Chromium oxide is not too agressive (way less than eg. diamonds). The are the traditional compound that is still very common with razors.
Diamonds need not be "too aggressive", it all depends on their size and the medium where they are suspened. Since making this video several years ago I have gotten into using Gunny Juice and I find the supurb mirror finish that I can get much easier to accomplish with their very fine sub micron size diamonds. I generally begin stropping with 6micron and then end with 0.5micron. Easier and faster (but MORE expensive) than any traditional stropping solution.
I had also tried other diamond stropping products in the past too, but none I tested are as good as Gunny Juice.
@@CanadianCuttingEdge Size matters or course, but if you compare say 0.3 micron chromium oxide, 0.25 micron diamond is still more aggressive and the scratch pattern is different. Diamond also seems to remove more material.
For utility knives, who cares. For razors it seems to make a difference and one probably prefers plain leather always as a last step.
I've not compared 0.1 micron diamond to 0.3 micron chromium oxide with my razors. Perhaps some day when I get curious enough.
Love the video Jake especially that Venev diamond compound set. I’m going to order that set that is unless you want to sell me your lol take care buddy have a wonderful and safe Christmas my friend.
i will be keeping my multi set, but I would be happy to sell some of the other compounds that are in the video - the lip balm sticks or tubs I have too much of the super fine compound, I won't use it all in the rest of my life.
@@CanadianCuttingEdge I think I will take you up on that in the new year if that’s ok. With Christmas fast approaching the Knife life takes a little bit of a back seat to the grand kids..lol. I will touch base in January if that’s cool Jake. Take care buddy.
Love the video. Thank you for some great pointers. If you didn't show your face and I only heard your voice, l would have thought that Jordan Peterson was finally conveying some helpful information.
Well now, that is a pretty huge compliment. thanks.
As a newbie to this whole knife thing, i heard that you get better results from the blue compound compared to the green. What say, Jake? Thanks for sharing.
Yes, blue is "better", in a way...
If I had to choose between only the blue or green I would stick with the green, it works well enough for me. Blue is a finer compound than the green. For those who want to to the extra work and get a super perfect polish follow up after the green with the blue. Since I have mostly knives that cost $50 or less the green can do a better job than I need.
It's all a question of how perfect you want the edge to be. And you need to go up in grit in many stages. I recommend going up in steps of less than double increase on each step. that goes for sharpening and for polishing. So this means: Start with the coarsest grit you need to get the job started. Say you start at 100grit. I would then go to 150, followed by 240 (it's hard to find a grit that is 50% more than 150) and after that 400, then usually 600, then 1000 ( I often stop there) but some keep going. If you try to jump a few steps you have to work much harder for each grit.
For example the scratches left at 100 would take a VERY long time to get rid off if you jump straight to 400grit. It might take 10 minutes. It is much less work and it actually goes faster to take many small steps. Sure it takes more time to change stones but the energy and frustration with the sharpening task is a lot longer. So 2 minutes at each of 3 steps (= 6 minutes) VS 10 minutes between each step.
Polishing compound should be seen as just another finer step in the sharpening process instead of being seen as an additional process. You are just sharpening/polishing with finer and finer steps each time. So to sharpen to 1200 and then go to the blue compound is skipping steps, but to sharpen to 1200 and then use the green makes sense.
Blue is great stuff, in its proper place.
Am I over explaining?
Thank you for this. Had no idea so much existed.
I use a Work Sharp with the blade grinder attachment, and the company’s strop belts.
There is a leather belt for it. Would you recommend a diamond paste or emulsion that would be a good next step from what I use? Is there a single grit at the diamond level that represents a worthwhile step up (without having to invest in multiple diamond products)?
I’d like to start somewhere and see that there’s a benefit there. Any recommendation?
Yes, you can use the same compounds, pastes, and emulsions on the powered belt strops. The big thing is that you have to be very careful on a power strop - put very little pressure on the blade edge or you will end up making the edge worse by stropping instead of better.
i have hustle stropping compound grean and white from amazon home much presure should i apply when stropping what angle
Light pressure, just enough to keep your stropping consistent. Heavier pressure usually leads to rounding the edge which = less sharp.
How do you strop the whole edge with a 3/4 inch wood border on the strop?
The wood isn't level with the leather, the leather is on top of the wood layer so the border isn't an issue, the knife never touches it.
Can't you do the same thing much faster with rouge , drill and buffing wheel?
There are always a lot more ways of doing things than are shown in any one video.
Yes, you could use a drill and a wheel (but not a cloth or fabric buffing wheel, that will actually round over the edge making the knife more dull than when you started), you can look up "stropping with mdf wheel" and find a lot of videos about people using that method. Most of those videos fail to mention how easy it is to overheat the edge of the blade with that method thereby ruining the temper of the heat treatment and actually damaging the blade though. Therefore I don't teach that method myself.
i see that the 8 variety pack is sold out at gritomatic? is that usually the case? any other alternatives for a good starter kit for my strops? and your opinion on strops not attached to a wood board, but on a hangar like in the old cowboy movies?
Check out my video on the Gunny Juice product for stropping, I like that a fair bit better yet. I only found out about Gunny Juice recently - ruclips.net/video/yT0Db1zns2Y/видео.html
Gunny Juice costs more, by a fair bit, but it performs a lot better too, much better than I expected, I use it exclusively now.
That same "Sample Pack" from Venev is now $31.50 on Amazon. Yikes - inflation!
What do you think about using a 0.5 micron paste as an all-purpose stropping compound? These products are pricey, and I'm just trying to save & simplify.
Thanks, Jake - take care...
It's mostly because Venvev is a Russian company and there is a 40% tariff tax on anything from there due to Putin invading Ukraine - this time it's not an inflation thing.
I started out using stuff like half micron for knives, then I got experience and learned what I was doing. There's really no reason to use that fine of an abrasive with a strop. Even using something like 2 or 3 microns, when you're talking about a wood or leather substrate the finish that leaves on steel is clearly and obviously finer than the finest whetstones in the sub micron range. So if a 2 or 3 um diamond article suspended in oil or emulsion or whatever and applied to a substrate of leather or wood is already leaving a finer finish that a
Thanks for sharing your perspective Jeff.
For most knives I don't go finer than 6 microns unless I am obsessing over the edge. I also have found using a fine product with a strop requires quite a bit less time and effort to get a polished edge than using super fine stones - in my experience.
I have to disagree with the perspective that there are only 3 types of stones though, I could agree that there are three main categories of stones, but you put quotation marks around types, so I cannot be sure what you mean. Perhaps you believe every diamond stones is exactly the same as every other diamond stone and every whetstone is the same as every other whetstone, etc. I would disagree with that.
I know the science of what Scott Gunn does with his products because I have had conversations with him and there is nobody doing what he is doing in the knife market. Certainly, one can question if his stuff different/better enough to be worth the premium in price - the answer to that will be subjective.
I am a professional knife sharpener and I know from my experiences which products work best for me and which products are the wisest purchases for me in the long term. I don't earn a penny from any of the knife/sharpening product links that I provide (except for Amazon links), so I don't have a financial interest in whether or not people use the products that I suggest.
@@CanadianCuttingEdge A high concentration of 6 um diamond will for sure get you polished up quicker than a lot of ultra fine stones. It depends on the steel but imho Naniwa super stones, especially that 12k is by far the best (mirror) polishing stone on the market... and I've tried everything. I've taken a ZDP-189 edge from a 600 grit to a absolute mirror in a couple minutes with that thing. It's superb. It nearly even worked on getting the factory edge but ultimately there were too many deep scratches and weirdness going on with the bevel.
What I was talking about is waterstones and grit ratings. Grit ratings are quite arbitrary, and depends on the product line. I rarely see anyone mention that to newb looking to get their first stones though. What I've come to find is even abrasive particle size doesnt tell the whole story because of how the binding can affect how deep those abrasives cut regardless of their size.
Strop at edge angle not 2 degree higher. This is because the material is compressible being a strop
Thanks brian
How would you clean it off?
I am not sure what you mean. How would I clean the compound off the leather? to get it all off would be pretty much impossible, but using a heat-gun and a scraper might get most of it off.
@@CanadianCuttingEdge what I meant was how do you clean leather? Replace belt or use a cleaner?
I've always kept it simple. I use an eraser, then sometimes some very fine sandpaper, then reapply compound.
Well seems like it works. I can shave my arm hair. Lol.
they do have a very good esthetic, I like it too.
At 1:40 I seen all I needed to know. Couldn't watch no more.
A wise man can learn from people who are not simply a copy of their existing way of thinking. A closed minded man simply cannot stand someone doing something the disagree with.
I don't store my strops by stacking them like that, I simply needed to put them to the side for a moment to keep the video going forward. I store my strops each in their own plastic bag.
I just don't understand why people who disagree with a video spend the time posting a comment, because all it does is make the video more popular in th e algorithm so that more people will see it. They are probably the same people who think hitting the dislike button will make a difference - it does make a difference because the algorithm ups videos that get either a thumbs up or a thumbs down, it doesn't matter, as long as people interact with the video it gets more and more standing.