Our readers have doubtless seen the “Cheap John” strop-vendors take a rough table knife, strop it on one of their “patent” strops and cut a hair with it. Nevertheless such a knife, sharpened in that way, would not cut good sections, and such a strop is not just the thing for giving the finishing touch to a section-knife, even though the label does say that it is “intended for surgical instruments.”[21] Footnote 21: The finest emery paper, glued on a strip of wood and used as a strop, will impart to a razor an edge sufficiently keen to enable it to remove the beard, and if paper three or four degrees coarser be used, a very dull knife or razor may be sharpened, and afterwards stropped on the finer emery until it is keen enough to cut a hair. But it will be found that cutting edges produced in this way are not smooth enough for section-cutting. The strop should never be used with the intention of removing metal so as to thin the edge of the knife. This is the proper function of the hone, and those who depend most on the hone and least on the strop, will always succeed best. The strop is used in the first place for _smoothing_ off the edge, and in the second for removing that incipient dullness which always comes from even the slightest use. It is true that in the latter case the strop trespasses somewhat on the functions of the hone, but only to a very slight extent, and stropping should never be carried so far as to require more than a very few strokes. [Illustration: Fig. 11.] [Illustration: Fig. 12.]