what's going on guys it's Alex here since then you're gonna be entering another commonly asked question that I get all the time and that is how the heck do you clean your traps after they get all gunked up with compound plus stick around because I have a bonus tip at the end of the video alright guys so this is a close up look of this drop I actually have maintained this drop fairly well this drop doesn't necessarily need to be reconditioned at this point I'd actually used it a little bit longer but for the sake of this video because it gets so many questions about this we're gonna go ahead and recondition it now and I'm not sure if this is gonna come up on camera but you might be able to see kind of a grayish streak that's where the metal has been removed from the knife and again I'm not real sure if you can see this but hopefully it'll come through you can kind of see like a glazed look to the top of the strop I typically don't like my straps looking like they've got kind of a glaze on them I like them relatively rough almost as if the leather was fairly new that just kind of suits my needs best for the type of sharpening that I do so the first thing that you're gonna need are some razor blades here's a quick tidbit of information for you these are carpet blades carpet razor blades and if you need a very sharp utility knife buy yourself a carpet knife and buy carpet specific razor blades these are a lot sharper than your average everyday disposable razor blades they do sell these in the big-box stores like Home Depot and Lowe's but they sell them back in the carpet department not up front with all the tools with all the other razor blades now I like using a relatively new blade for this purpose you don't want a razor blade that's super dinged up or a super dog you want the edges to be in relatively good condition now it should probably go without saying that if you are using a double sided razor blade like this be very careful doing this these are extremely sharp and you can and will cut yourself if you use a double sided razor blade like this for this purpose I just cut myself so I'm just gonna take a razor blade we're gonna angle it backwards slightly we're not gonna cut into the straw so angle it backwards and simply drag it along the surface of the shrub and there you can see all of the compound I love the old compound that we just removed from the strap I typically do a couple passes and there is our resurfaced and reconditioned strap so how exactly do you reapply a compound well I've been experimenting with different methods on applying compounds to strop and honestly the best method that I've come up with so far is to simply take the compound bar and rub it directly into the strop literally that simple you can use things like cutting board oil or mineral oil to help cut the compound down and help it soak into the strop a little bit but honestly I haven't really noticed that much of a difference in doing that and it ends up it seems like it just gets everything all home messy and doesn't really help much so I just rub the compound directly into the strop and forego the oil another quick tip don't set your compound down just anywhere keep this bar nice and clean you don't want to contaminate the bar so there we have it that's pretty much it that's pretty much exactly how I recondition my straps every time I do this more often than not I try to not let them get super built up and the reason I do this because I like my stropping surface with a little bit of the leather grain I don't know what would you call this but the leather fiber is kind of sticking up off of the strop I usually stop at relatively low angles and that just seems to work the best for me and my particular sharpening needs if you know a better way to do this let me know in the comments if you know a different way to do this again let me know in the comments I'd love to hear it so this same principle actually works with buffing wheels however rather than a razor blade we're gonna be using a chisel again the chisel needs to be in relatively good condition you don't want huge chunks taken out of it or anything but pretty much any chisel will work this is a junk chisel I do not use my good chisels for this so just want to have lying around for doing things like this these buffing wheels can get kicked up with compound pretty bad and need to be cleaned because a buffing wheel that's all kicked up and nasty will not do a very good job at buffing I do this often when I'm using my buffing wheel it just keeps it nice and fluffy and in good working condition so a quick note about this this is extremely dangerous and it will kill you so do not attempt this also always wear eye protection when dealing with a buffer all right so I'm gonna have to do this voice over because you can't hear me talking over the sound of the buffing wheel but anyway you're gonna want to grab firmly and I repeat firmly ahold of the chisel during this buffing wheel cleansing period once you have a firm grasp on the chisel basically lightly touch it to the buffing wheel this is not rocket science and I think most of you can understand what is going on here we're just taking a kind of a sharp object and using it to scrape off the compound from the buffing wheel the key here is is that you're not gonna want to use something super flimsy to do this with an old chisel works perfectly well don't do this with a spackle knife with a razor blade or anything flimsy like that because the things gonna jump back and forth on you like crazy and could wobble back and forth enough and snap in half and throw pieces everywhere so you're gonna want to do this with a relatively stiff piece of metal doesn't have to be a sharp edge but it does have to be somewhat of an edge in order to scrape off the old compound another thing that's super important is you always want to angle the chisel slightly downwards if the top of the wheel is spinning towards you which is the way that most buffing wheels spin unless your grinder spun around in the opposite direction and the top of the buffing wheel is spinning away from you in any matter you never want the sharp portion of the chisel angled into the incoming wheel hopefully this makes sense if you have any questions about this ask me in the comments below and I will try and answer them again if you know a better way to do this let me know in the comments I'd love to hear it so that concludes our video today if you like this video please like it if you're not subscribed please subscribe and also share this video it really helps out me in the channel thank you guys for watching and I'll see you in the next video