Thread: Stropping with toothpaste: anybody tried?

I haven't used toothpaste on steel tools
But I did hear about it when I was panel beater.
About using it on glass
It stands to reason it's just a gel carrying a fine abrasive.
And I can see no harm in trying apart from mint smelling sharp tools .

Sounds like it's worth a shot. Give it a go!

I have read about people using it for polishing plastic headlights and glass.

In principle, to be effective, the abrasive needs to be harder (Mohs Scale) than the subject.
In a particle size large enough to be effective.
While fang-paste will polish teeth, glass and plastic, I doubt that it is formulated to
cut steel because that's what you're expecting it to do.

You might be just as well off to modify an old VCR and hone your tools on the iron oxide of the ferromagnetic tape on fast rewind.

I would have thought glass and basic hardened tool steels would have been about the same hardness...
Maybe that's a long bow.

It would make for a good experiment.

I agree = a great experiment to be followed with a 50X magnifier to see what it can do.
Question: what is the abrasive and what is the grit particle size in toothpastes?

Helping a beginning carver, they had a piece of chrome green in wax, so badly formulated,
that it actually flaked off the strop in chunks. Have never seen anything quite so poor.

One fundamental point: glass is a supercooled liquid, steel is a solid.
With X-Ray diffraction, liquids and solids have fundamentally different patterns.
Correctly broken 1/4"/6mm plate glass provides an edge sharp enough to cut sections thin
enough for examination in a transmission electron microscope. I did that for several years.
That edge flows away in less than 30 minutes. It's still good enough to cut exploratory sections
for use with a light microscope (2 micron) but for TEM, it's trash.

Diamond knives have long become the research standard for TEM, they seem to last forever.
By 1970, they were down to $1,500/mm of edge to buy and $1,500/mm edge to resharpen.
My Prof bought me a 3mm knife!

The formulation of toothpaste has changed over the years and the abrasive material now used is hardly abrasive at all. This is because some of the older abrasives actually damaged teeth by wearing through the enamel.

I think Sodium Bicarbonate is the abrasive in modern toothpastes.

Bon Ami was an excellent abrasive but I haven't seen it for years. It was made from crushed eggshells.


I had to redo the vinyl coating on my floor and it places there was fine scuffing that was hard to deal with. I used Jiff and the result was brilliant.

From Scientific American (amongst numerous others)
Glass, however, is actually neither a liquid—supercooled or otherwise—nor a solid. It is an amorphous solid—a state somewhere between those two states of matter.

Brett
I may just start calling my self a
Amorphous solid a between state

I've always used toothpaste on my leather strop for taking the burr off knives and getting a sharper edge on snap off blades.

Originally Posted by artme

The formulation of toothpaste has changed over the years and the abrasive material now used is hardly abrasive at all. This is because some of the older abrasives actually damaged teeth by wearing through the enamel.

I think Sodium Bicarbonate is the abrasive in modern toothpastes.

Bon Ami was an excellent abrasive but I haven't seen it for years. It was made from crushed eggshells.


I had to redo the vinyl coating on my floor and it places there was fine scuffing that was hard to deal with. I used Jiff and the result was brilliant.

Crushed eggshells might be another thing to explore, after all they are basically pure calcium carbonate, maybe mixing them with toothpaste is a wonderful combination, more aggressive than toothpaste alone. Crushed eggshells can be used to make varnish also.

Originally Posted by steamjunkprops

I've always used toothpaste on my leather strop for taking the burr off knives and getting a sharper edge on snap off blades.

Do you think is as good as any other green chromium oxide?

I believe that the best one is strictly a matter of personal preference.
Is egg shell hard enough to be effective?
Steels vary in hardness (Rc numbers) and that will change the outcomes.

TNX for the tip on the structure of glasses, science moves on.
Still, it can and does flow.

Time passes and I've worn away quite a lot of my chunk of chrome green.
So much so that I've run into little white lumps, pockets of the finer aluminum oxide,
I suppose, from poor mixing.
I know that Lee Valley sells the mix, I don't know the source of my lump,
it was part of a course-recommended kit.

At the end of the process, all I care about is the effectiveness of the edges in wood.

That was a pretty interesting bit of info RV! 30mins and the edge flows away!

I keep coming across different views on what state glass falls in. I'm going to take it from the horses mouth on that one! I cannot say I have ever met someone that has worked and looked at glass that closely before.

For woodworking, I have found the green chrome oxide to be just fine. It's quick enough to finish your sharpening by hand. It's a flexable system as well. Fresh compound cuts faster, the old compound which has broken up cuts finer.

It's a hunch, but stropping is not a new thing. If toothpaste was the bees knees of stropping paste, we would all be using it. Their may have been a great toothpaste formula that was a good stropping compound, but because it's toothpaste, they are liable to change the recipe from time to time.

It's definitely worth a play.
Steamjunkprops, what type of toothpaste have you found works for you?

I have played around with diy abrasives in the past. Will keep up with it when I get inspired again..
FYI, pure cement cast into a sharpening stone shape.....does not work very well. It's too slow and not friable at all... It's a pretty looking brick though!

One day I will keep playing with the idea though. A plaster and cement mix might be in order.

Every old, Old timer I meet that worked with their hands, I generally always ask what they used for stropping compound.

The most common answers I get were cigarette ash, a super hot grass fire and collect the white powder left behind or the white ash from a fireplace.

Mix it with a carrier such as baby oil, bees wax, tallow or neetsfoot oil or a mix of the above.

Most of the time it was the standard double sided stones you find in garage sales and a quick strop in the hand. The blokes that shared the info about stropping usually had much finer stones.

I'm kind of done with experimenting with materials.
If a piece of egg shell won't make a scratch on steel = useless for edge management.
Maybe you can hit some exotic heights by claiming that you are using powdered Emu egg shell?
Or shredded Platypus egg shell mixed with Wombat fat? How about a goanna skin strop?
I remember those guys were pretty rough and tough.

Methods? I've had to learn to use 18mm rods & sandpapers (800 & 1500) then chrome green on card
to do up all (16) of my crooked knives, whether they have single or double bevels.
Clamp the tool down and move the abrasive. That's been a satisfying exploration.

I bought a couple of ordinary hardware store oil stones. By touch and feel,
one is like 80 & 120 grit sandpapers. The other is like 120 and 220. Fine by me.
I use them to joint edges for repair or to scrub a bevel to a new angle.

Glass flow is an issue with the technical sophistication needed in sample preparation
for electron microscopy. I'd never notice with anything else.