Vegetable tanned leather set grain side up on wood handle to strop knives. You may apply white or green polishing compound to enhance the metal finish. However do note to use a different strop for each paste. Stropping removes fine metal burs on each side to razor sharpness.
Skiving knives, razor blades, skinning knives, carving tools and in fact all cutting tools find stropping improves sharpness especially hard edge retension metal like HSS requires just stropping to renew cutting edge.
