[move]...let's talk stropping!!![/move]

...I currently use a power strop on my drill press for most stropping and use the supplied white colored jewelers rouge supplied with the strop seems to work well as evident by my my shops '[move]blood[/move] floor' .
...I also have a hand strop, since I don't purchase leather i purchased the strop and some rouge, this time the rouge is brown and also would appear to work well.

So the question I pose today is:

What type of compund do you folks use and have you found one type to be better than another?

[mdallensr]

I'm not wild about Flexcut tools, but I like their Flexcut Gold stropping compound. I also am sold on the Yellowstone Gold. Everything else I use or have tried runs a distant second to either of those for carving tools. Mike

I concur the Yellowstone Gold is what works best for me. I have a leather powerstrop and it works as well on that as on my leather strop that I have glued to a wooden paddle.

I used to use the Flexcut gold compound, but have switched to Yellowstone (which for some reason is pink?) Seems to work a bit better, not a lot, but somewhat. That's on my hand strops, On the power strop I use jewelers rouge.

[Kenny_S]

Flexcut yellow and Jewelers rouge(red).

....i'll have to check out the yellowstone gold...

...if I were to switch compunds and my powerstrop is already charged with a jewelers rouge should i strip it of the compund before applying a new type??

I don't think Yellowstone will work to well on a power strop. It's a dry compound. That's why I use jewelers rouge on the power strop. Along the same lines, the manufacturer recomends Yellowstone be applied to clean strop. However, I have has success by scraping the old compound off and then applying the Yellowstone. Why I did that I don't know as I have more strops than anybody has a use for. Curiousity I guess.

[AlArchie]

Well, there may be better and there may be worse, but I've pretty well limited my use to red jewelers rouge. Found the best stuff at Santa Fe Jewelers Supply, in NM. It is the softest bars I have seen anywhere. I've tried Tripoli and the white polishing sticks, but always came back to the rouge.

It works for me so I probably won't change.

Al

[Colin_Partridge]

I have tried just about all of them but I now use the Flexcut gold. I find that is does a much better job and lasts as long as the green I used to use. I happen to like my Flexcut tools I find that they do a great job for me.
Colin

[BasketballJones]

I've asked this before and got different responses so I tried as many as possible, including the grinders compound, tripoli and Turtle Wax rubbing compound and my conclusion was they all worked it was just a matter of my effort. So I'm either easy to please or nieve.

I mention the turtle wax rubbing compound (red) as it is cheap and I used it to powerbuff a scratch job on my Xterra. It was first recommended to me by another carver as it contains calmus (whatever that is) and mild grit aluminum oxide. I mentioned this because I can use my Craftsman orbital sander as a sander, grinder, poliisher, and power strop. In fact I discovered you can use all orbital sanders as polishers.

What I liked about the red compound is the fact it wasn't overly aggressive. It removed just a little paint at a time and buffed out the scratch. I visibly used the paint as a learning gauge. If I trusted it on my truck then why not my knives. The best way for me to tell how well the various compounds worked was to mark my blades with a marking pen. I point out that I did not power strop my knives, as I did not feel confident in doing so.

Marking the blade helped me determine if I was stopping correctly and what compound was working. Marking the blade came from somebody's carving website so I can't take credit for that ingenius tutoring idea. It is a good concept for seeing and learning the honing and stropping process.

Ken