Jende Nanocloth Strops

tomhosang

tomhosang

Joined
Feb 17, 2017
Messages
262
Hello everyone! I was doing some searching online and came across the nanocloth strops from Jende Industries. I was looking for a strop setup for my KME and these seem like a great option. I was wondering though, can these be run dry or should I use diamond emulsions with them? Also, would it be better to go this route or just get the set of lapping films directly from KME? Thanks!
 
Wow i wasn't aware of Jende nanocloth strops (they are all called "nanocloth ultra strops"), looks like great stuff: a 5mm colored acrylic (=plastic) laser-engraved holder plus a very thin layer of cloth. The cloth and the acrylic seems to be identical microscopic material for each nanocloth strop, no matter the micron rating. You cannot run these totally dry, the cloth must be loaded with compound such as sprays or emulsions. From what i understood and common sense, these strops do not come pre-loaded with compound — i might be wrong, though.

The product page explicitly offers you to add matching sprays or emulsions to your cart to accompany your nanocloth strop purchase. Now why would it offer that? Easy guess: Even if the cloth came pre-loaded with compound, you would still need the spray (or emulsion) to reload/refresh/maintain the cloth on the plastic holder … eventually!

I am not sure about the prices, though. Is the following correct, 1x50ml of 1micron spray costs 50$ and 1x50ml of 0.5micron emulsion costs 62$? 1 acrylic+cloth costs 14$, but you'll need 2x of them. Oic :)
 
Ever hear of Nano cloth?

Nano Cloth
After a great deal of research and experimentation, I have found a material that has almost no effect on sharpening an edge - less than leather, felt or balsa. For extremely fine compounds , you don't want what you put your compounds on to provide more abrasion than the compounds, so this is an IDEAL substrate for your finest compounds. MUCH less give than even the hardest of felts, this is a synthetic fiber producing a completely uniform surface that HOLDS compound in place.

Available in three sizes 1x6" and 3x8" and 3x11". The 1x6" is mounted on aluminum backing for the EdgePro (for use where space and portability is a concern) and the 3x8" and 3x11" are mounted on glass to give an exceptionally flat surface with outstanding characteristics. Use the 3x8" size in standard stoneholders Has less draw than Kangaroo leather and is suitable for use with the finest of compounds. Not ideal for use with pastes, but rather sprays with deionized water such as the CBN and poly and mono diamond compounds from 1 micron down to 0.025 micron diamond. Also doesn't fluff out from water. Provides an ultimate level of performance for knife and razor edges. Like leather, use edge trailing strokes only. Absolutely superb to use for edge touchups too!
Click to expand...
 
Mo2 said:
Ever hear of Nano cloth?
Click to expand...

I've been using one of those CKTG nano cloth strops as an experiment. They work. What prompted me to this experiment was 2 things: some comments here in BF that some folks have gotten good results using compound on linen with a hard backing, AND some evidence based testing at the site https://scienceofsharp.wordpress.com/ that used SEM imaging and controlled tests to evaluate different stropping approaches. With regard to stropping, one of the findings at that site is to use a 2-stage stropping process to finish an edge, where stage 1 is strop with compound on linen with a goal of "micro-convexing" your edge right near the apex, and stage 2 is stropping a few passes on clean leather to do final small amount of abrasion which improves "keenness" (by which he means--the width of the apex itself). It's questionable whether this 2nd stage is necessary or highly useful on knives--his study applies primarily to straight razors--but for now that's what I'm running with.

So I've been comparing these 2 approaches with stropping to see what kind of results I get:
  • The 2-stage "Science of Sharp" recommended approach that involves hard backed linen (Nanocloth, in my case) with cbn compound, followed by stropping on clean hard backed leather.
  • OR
  • Simple 1-stage stropping that I was already using: stropping on a 2x12" hardwood block, sanded, with cbn compound.

I do notice SLIGHTLY more refined edges on folders and kitchen knives as measured by their performance on various cutting tests and media. However, it is usually not a 'pass/fail' magnitude of difference, if you are talking about the tests in the Sharpness Chart linked in the forum sticky. For example, a blade that passes the test of filleting 80 lb printer paper, will pass the test regardless which of the 2 stropping methods above is used. So we are not talking about a drastic difference here for everyday knife usage. But what I will notice is a qualitative difference: the knives stropped with the 2-stage process will slice more cleanly in newsprint, push cut with a less ragged edge in cigarette paper, or shave arm hair with a little less friction.

So far, I think the nanocloth (or just using linen) on a hard backing with compound, followed by stropping on clean leather or just done by itself, probably does offer some enhancement over other stropping methods. But for EDU knives, it's not a large difference that I can tell so far.
 
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