Can you sharpen a blade with a leather belt?
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Can you sharpen a blade with a leather belt?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “leather belt knife sharpener“
About Elliana
Technically no. You can strop a blade on a leather belt and this will have the effect of turning small bits of metal back straight and make the knife sharper but you are not technically sharpening the knife.
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Yes! You absolutely can. Now, we have to define “sharpening” in this context. The most common use of a leather belt when it comes to knives is a “honing strop.” You’ve probably seen an old movie where a barber grabs a leather strap on the wall and swipes his straight razor over it a few times before giving some cowboy a hot shave… The leather strap he grabbed is a proper strop. The rough leather surface has been rubbed with an abrasive compound that he pulls the edge of the razor past to hone, or straighten any micro rolls on the very edge of the blade. This process doesn’t really REMOVE any steel, which is what sharpening typically does, but it does help the blade have a more uniform and finer edge.
Now, let’s say that we use a very coarse abrasive compound on the leather, and you pull that knife across it MANY times… You WILL remove steel this way, and eventually it will be sharpening rather than honing. In fact, taping sandpaper to a mouse pad is a popular sharpening method, not that far removed from stropping with a coarse compound.
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Sharpen? As in from duller than a rock? No.
A leather belt can be used as a leather strop to restore the knifes cutting potential by straightening the edge alignment.
It can also burnish or polish the steel to have a smoother cutting surface giving it less resistance allowing for better efficiency.
But it can’t actually sharpen the edge of the blade.
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Sharpen- No
Hone- Yes
The difference? Sharpening means physically regrinding an edge down to fractions of micron sized teeth that were not present before sharpening. These teeth get bent and curled over to one side or the other and result in an edge’s dullness.
Honing or Re-Honing with a leather strop is the process of straightening out those teeth uniformly so that they are all pointed back in the same direction. A knife made from a good quality blade material and thus high edge retention will be able to be re-honed significantly more times than a generic knife steel before those teeth break off and a new edge will have to be cut back into the blade.
Edit : syringe image replaced with this image of a blade cross-section from What’s a Honing Steel? .
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Unless you attach rather abrasive stuff to the belt, like a strip of sandpaper or something, the belt will not be doing any substantial sharpening.
It can make for a good strop, though. For best results, get a stropping compound and apply it to the leather first. Bare leather works somewhat but you get more results with a stropping compound, which can refine an already-established sharp edge and take it to the next level.
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Yes, you can certainly polish an edge with a leather belt, and with some stiff leather with fine abrasive powder you can put a razor edge on a thin blade—which is exactly how straight razors were sharpened. I don’t use a straight razor, but I have used leather to put the finishing touch on knives and wood carving tools.
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No no no. A belt is not a strop. It is a poor excuse for one. It is made to hold your pants up. If you want a strop, buy a strop. You will probably ignore this because you will think that you, who knows nothing about crafting fine edges, know more than me, who does. Well, go ahead. Satisfy your curiousity. It doesn’t really matter because it is probably a knife and not a razor, and isn’t sharp anyway. The …
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I hone my knives all the time with a leather strop with some polishing compound. To actually sharpen, you’d need to use the appropriate diamond paste, but that would make a mess of the belt.
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Define “Sharpen” , if you mean put an edge on something that didn’t have one – No
If you mean take a knife with a full edge but will still cut, maybe.
What leather does is hold grit that you can use to polish but won’t really quickly grind a bevel edge
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After shaping the edge on a stone the strop removes the microscopic wire edge trim the blade. I’ve done it on boot tops and trousers belts…. Even the calloused heel of a hand will work in a pinch
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