Terminology

[Clifford_Parker]

I keep seeing people refer to stropping as honing. I have been sharpening knives for 34-35 years and was taught that these are two different parts of the sharpening process. Whetting, honing, and stropping are all important techniques and each has it's time and place in keeping tools sharp.

Here is the terminology that I learned decades ago.

Whetting is the process of establishing an edge on a tool or blade. This is usually done with coarse or medium grit stones (whet stones), diamond stones or cards, or abrasive sheets. Whetting a blade or tool should only need to be done if the edge geometry needs to be changed or reset or if the blade is extremely dull.

Honing is the use of a fine stone (hard Arkansas, fine diamond, water stone, etc.), ceramic, steel, or fine abrasive sheets to refine the edge of a tool or blade. Cutting edges require occasional honing to keep the edge geometry correct and to prevent or correct the rounding caused by wear and stropping.

Stropping is the use of a piece of leather, hard rubber, canvas, smooth board, or cardboard to remove the wire edge produced by the first two processes and to polish the edge to a razor sharpness. The use of very fine abrasives (jeweler's rouge, polishing/stropping compounds, valve lapping compounds, etc.) speeds this process and helps to achieve a mirror smooth cutting surface.

[vic n]

"To each his own" as they say. I actually don't much use the honing term because to me, that is part of the sharpening(whetting) process. Only when I've reached a wire with 2000 grit paper, do I consider my tool sharp. I then strop to remove the wire and while I'm carving. Hopefully I won't have to sharpen/whet for several months. Vic

[hobo]

clifford, I think over the yrs hone and strop have become the same thing to alot of people . because of all the different ways to sharpen maybe one reason? but you hit the nail on the head.

[cats pa]

Cliff, I learned it like you did, from "Pa", my grandfather who lived to be 92. But the last 12 years he was senile, so I didn't learn much from him then.

No, wait a minute - that's not true. I did. I learned that I don't want to live long enough to be old and sick and weak and broke, and senile, all at the same time.

Parker