Stropback

Michael Christy and Ben Spallos told me about a thing called 'stropback' of a knife steel, or how easily and sharp a knife steel gets from stropping it back to sharp. I really prefer to do a full sharpening job if my knife gets dull, as it only takes a few minutes once the knife is shaped to cut off the old bevel and sharpen the knife again, but given that I did a 'show' edge on my Spyderco Siren, I did notice that the LC2000N 'stropsback' very nicely, like how a good HT'd 52100 or AEB-L does. Very nice indeed. No loss of slicing aggression when I stopped the LC2000N either, a good sign, since you can kill your edge by stropping sometimes.

Years ago, I used to believe the idea that strop+compound was mandatory to obtain a very sharp edge, and that good sharpening, from dull to sharp had to take at least half an hour of meticulous stone work+stropping.
I now ditched strops completely, I recognize my edges were sometimes so fatigued they collapsed immediately after minor work (and they were 20+DPS). Also, slicing aggression was basically nonexistent.
I now sharpen much thinner edges at much lower angles, I don't polish the edge so much anymore (woodworking blades get spyderco fine ceramic, that's it), I frequently destress the edge and I deburr properly on stones.
Stropping now seem like a good way to lose all edge aggression to gain a tiny bit of refinement, not worth it in my opinion.
Not saying there is no way to make stropping work, ie recently watched an old video by Cliff and started stropping axes as the last sharpening step to increase the angle at the very apex for greater edge durability in chopping at the expense of edge aggression (almost useless in pure chopping tools), it seems to work pretty well [url=http://

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Millscale,
Yes, for the initial sharpening I usually do not use strop unless I am trying to get a push cutting edge that will split hairs. Even then, they are not necessary most of the time. I find that a few passes on a Spyderco UF or Dans Surgical Black Arkansas Stone will usually bring an edge back better than a strop. I just found it interesting that different steels responded differently to a touch-up stropping.

Millscale,
Also, I have found that a few passes on a strop with green compound help the Norton Fine India achieve more push-cutting ability than it usually has right off the stone. I am able to do most of the push-cutting things I like from a polished edge while retaining the excellent slicing aggression from the Norton Fine India stone.