Wicked Edge Balsa Strops Pack, 5 and 3,5 microns

Monday 4 June 2018

I have good experience with leather stropping, though admittedly the use of balsa is new to me. However, I broke with manly tradition and followed the instructions. I was stropping an M390 steel knife after progressing through the grits up to the WE 1500 grit diamond stones. The lapping paste on balsa had no noticeable effect whatsoever, save for taking off the diamond paste, which did not embed into the balsa strops as the instructions described. This may be because Wicked Edge seems to have an issue in formulating the correct micron transition from diamond stones through to stropping pastes and lapping films. I like the diamond stones of the Wicked Edge system, though they may well be coarser in their nominated grit than waterstones, and while they say their 1500 grit diamond stones are 3 micron, they are more like 8 micron, which seems consistent with WE's own recommendation to use 6 micron lapping films following the 1500 grit ("3 micron") stones (hence my choice of the nearest 5 micron paste), which shouldn't make any sense for diamond abrasives where the micron rating is more certain than the mean/weighted average grit size rating of waterstones. Frankly the balsa strops have been a complete write-off and waste of money for me on first use.