Feeling the Wire

When you sharpen a knife and then take it to the strop do you feel the burr?

I'm touching up an S30V blade and S30V and 3V both have a propensity to develop a whopper of a wire edge/burr that takes a while to break off. This blade is no exception to the rule.

What I notice, while stropping, is the presence of the burr on one side only. It's not flip-flopping like I've seen in the past but one side feels extremely smooth against the strop and the other drags. That drag is the burr.

Sometimes they're big, sometimes they're small but there's almost always a burr of some sort that needs to be worn off, broken off, or polished off.

The trick for me is to keep the stropping balanced from one side to the other despite the presence of the burr on only one side. What I don't want is a highly polished side and a side that has been left alone.

Now, I have some more stropping to do before the kids get home from school...

Thanks for reading,


B