Honing & De-Burring w/Felt

For some time I've been a pusher of using hard felt pads for de-burring and honing (stropping) of knives. I like felt primarily because it's user friendly, especially for the new stropper. It's not easy to round over edges using felt as a strop, it's a very forgiving medium.

Not all felt is created equal though, this is something that will be attested to by seasoned felt stroppers. There are many grades of felt. Industrial SAE (the most commonly found) is at best mushy fluff in it's hardest form. There's the craft store felt which is thin and less mushy but squishes up even when glued down. If you search around you can find the more desirable 'rock hard" felt from India (and sometimes the USA) which is what many of us have used as the best...up until now that is.

I've found a source that offers Indian felt that is quite a bit harder than "rock hard", is smooth, relatively (considering the other stuff) clean, and very dense - we call it "Ultra-Rock Hard".

If you want the very best felt pad that can be found, a felt pad that's perfectly suited to honing, stropping, and de-burring of Japanese knives then you need to check these Ultra-Rock Hard Felt Pads out.

*Note - We have two flavors available - with and without magnetic backing. The magnetic backed pads are a direct replacement/upgrade for all 11" x 3" bench hones that are topped with metal plates, magnetic receptive material, or are made from solid steel. So if you already have an 11" x 3" strop base that accepts magnetic backed pads then you're in luck as our pad will fit onto your strop base.





Also......

Don't forget to try out our Hard Felt De-Burring Blocks. We used to carry these years ago and they have always been very popular. I still use these things on every single knife I sharpen!

They work to grab the burrs from the edge and pull them off exposing the edge for further refinement or use. The magic is in the way that the hard felt self-heals, much like a nice bristle dart board, it allows penetration yet grabs just right so as to not dull the edge.