I have absolutely no wish to go down the the interminable 'sharpening' road so prevalent elsewhere but puzzled I am, so please mods, knock this on the head if it shows any sign of degenerating!
I can get my hand plane and chisel blades pretty sharp with my current system ('scary sharp' from WH using 3M films) and I've often debated whether or not stropping actually improves the edge?
So I just made myself a new strop and stuck on a bit of leather onto it from one of SWIMBO's old handbags, dressed it with some very fine, green Chromium Dioxide powder and rubbed in a smear of Vaseline for a bit of lubrication.
I honed as normal my LN A2 blade from my No.51 shooter and tried the edge; pretty good. I then passed it six or seven times over the strop and finally polished the back with a 1 micron film on the SS glass plate. It's now significantly über sharp, bl*%dy lethal in fact
Stropping seems to work (at least for me) but what say ye? - Rob