Description

Our favourite strop material – Kangaroo Tail Leather

Natural vegetable tanned high grade kangaroo tail leather.

We usually glue these to a timber backing board when used for polishing knives, chisels and plane blades. Kangaroo tail is naturally abrasive so abrasive compounds are not necessary but can be used if you desire a more aggressive cut.

Size – 350mm x 70mm x 0.9mm thick (average) but may vary to 2mm

Through our supplier this leather was obtained totally lawfully under a strict program administered by Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection (EHP) who govern licensing & codes of practice. The EHP program only allows species subject to habitat-threatening overpopulation. All were skinned accurately by professionals and tanned by a professional commercial tannery licensed under EHP Qld rules who legally deal in Kangaroo.

What is a strop?

Strops are porous surfaces such as leather, paper or wood used with, or without, very fine abrasives to polish cutting edges. The motion used to stropping is to draw the blade away from the cutting edge and hold it at the exact bevel angle that was first established. Careful stropping will keep an edge tool cutting well for a long time but eventually stropping will create an obtuse cutting angle (dubbing) and the tool will need to be reground.

Follow up the honing process by stropping to achieve a crazy sharp edge. Remember, draw strokes only, and only strop the bevel, not the back when sharpening a chisel or plane blade.

Abrasives used in stopping include:

• Silicon carbide powders such as valve grinding compound
• Natural buffing compounds such as jewellers rouge, tripoli and emery
• Synthetic compounds such as chromium oxide
• Diamond paste. Remember, draw strokes only, and only strop the bevel, not the back.