Inside stropping of gouges and V tools

There was some discussion a ways back on the need to strop the inside of gouges (the concave surface) and v tools. I think that, like plane irons and chisles, it is important to remove all manufacturing marks from both surfaces, and particularly not to ignore the back, flat surface.

What I have done is to wrap and glue a piece of leather around a dowel of a size to fit most gouges. (3/4' dowell makes a good starter for larger gouges)

For inside v-tools I cut a length of board with the inside angle matching the tool, and glued on a piece of leather to each surface.

For smaller gouges, I smeared wood glue on the outside of 3/16', 1/4', and 3/8' dowells, then wrapped leather shoe laces in a tight spiral up the lenth to about 2'. When the glue was dry, I cut the dowell end with the leather, off on the bandsaw to square the end, and just cut the other end, long enough for a handle.

Then all I did was charge the lace with jewelers rouge (my choice, but use your own compound) and use these to strop the inside of the tools.

For Micro-tools I cut a piece of thick, stiff leather, 3/4' wide and about three inches long, rounded one edge with a sanding block to fit the inside profile and cut a long groove in the leather with the tool for the outside stropping. Charged both with the jewelers rouge, and strop away!

Al

[woodenleg]

Great ideas here Al. I once visited a professional carver in Santa Fe and he used sand paper, folding it or rolling it to meet his needs. As I recall it was about 320 grit. He treated his tools like the dickens, but they seemed to always be sharp!!

Have you seen the little strop that most of the carving places sell? It has curves on it for various size gouges, a straight area, and accomodation for various 'V' sizes. I use that one a lot and it is very adequate.

I've seen the one that Flexcut advertises, but haven't seen one in person. If I do, I think I'll pick one up, as they are only around ten bucks if memory serves me right. We don't have any carving stores within a two day drive of our place so we gotta make do or catalog order. Got a trip planned later this spring to Kidron for some tools so I'll check there, then.

Al

[Ric]

I use the flexcut strop for about 86% of my gouges. It works well. Here is a site to check them out.
http://www.woodcarvingstore.com/Shar...tSlipStrop.asp

Ric

[Kenny_S]

Woodcraft Stores also Have the Flexcut strop advertized for around $10 dollars. Worth the money.

But Your Ideas were great for those of us that likes to make their own tools and strops. Thank you ALA!

You can buy an awful lot of basswood and make a bunch of strops for the same ten bucks and they will fit your tools profiles perfectly. The slipstrop does work, but if you have a variety of tools you need to fudge it on quite a few of them as the profiles don't match up. After repeated use, this could lead to misformed tools, remember, you are removing metal, however little. I don't use it at all on the inside bevels of any of my v tools or deep gouges and veiners. Plus, I tend to favor longer knives and the square flat strop tends to give me the willies when stropping a 3 1/2' blade. Result - I use homemade strops almost exclusively.

Wouldn't you have to use very thin leater when making your own strops for the inside of the

V tools and Gouges
just curious
I have a couple of short pieces of leather that are not mounted to anything that i use a lot to strop my tools
I also have some thin leather that I bought to make something out of but never have. It is almost like a thin buckskin. Wondered how it would work for stropping

My bible on the care and feeding of carving tools is 'Woodcarving Tools, Materials, & Equipment' by Chris Pye. He recommends stroping the inside of gouges and V's. My view is that both the top and bottom of the tool are in the wood when carving so both sides should be treated the same.
I could go on and on about the wealth of information in this 2 volume set. I recommend it.

I guess you could use very thin leather over a wood backing to strop the inside of V's, but I used thick (almost 1/4') and cut the edge of the leather to the inside angle. Lapped the eges for larger V's. Actually, you can just load a properly angled piece of wood charged with abrasive to hone the inside angles. a little leather just seems to hold the abrasive better.

Al

Actually, you don't need leather at all. Just load the bare wood with the stropping compound and go for it. Works well.