Stropping Edge Tools

The strop is not just for the razor.

On this site, in the post on shaving, there is a discussion of using a leather strop to put a real razor edge on a straight razor. Anything less than a razor edge is torture to shave with. The same principle applies to woodworking edge tools. They too can and should be stropped to a true razor edge.

Natural leather (sorry vegans) is unmatched I think as a sharpening tool for all kinds of edge tools, not just razors. If you have ever looked at the beautiful furniture work done by eighteenth and nineteenth century craftsmen, and wondered how such work was possible without power tools, I think the answer is that they used razor sharp planes, chisels and carving tools, and they gave their tools that razor edge with leather strops.

You might be surprise to learn it, but leather contains a super-fine abrasive grit, as does our own skin. Some users of straight razors have been know to give the razor a bit of stropping on their own skin. A leather faced strop is equivalent in grit to about a 16000 grit stone, if memory serves, much finer than the finest grades of oil and waterstones.

The effect of stropping on the performance of an edge tool can be quite magical. Forming a moulding more than an inch wide and a half an inch deep on the edge of a board becomes near effortless with a moulding plane that has a stropped iron and beeswax applied to the sole. You can quickly scrub down rough sawn boards with bench planes to a finish that is ready to paint or varnish.