Once you go CBN...

DeadboxHero

DeadboxHero

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Mar 22, 2014
Messages
5,388
You never go back! Ha

Well I finally broke down and dropped a c-note on some little bottles and a leather strop. I'll admit, I felt like an idiot.

But,

Wow.

I'm impressed.

This stuff cuts fast! And polishes too.

The best is that is lasts longer then I expected. It not like the compound bars that load with swarf and need to be reapplied.
This stuff keeps going without reapplication.

I've been thourh most of my knives. Still no reapplication. Wow.



 
Nifty. Let us know if/when the compound loads. It has to load at some point, but the immulsions not loading easily means I might be replacing my bars.
 
I use the CBN emulsions from Ken Schwartz extensively. Outstanding products with big bang for the buck. Hard to beat. Eye opening for sure.
 
So far I can do 20 knives before I notice it loading and cutting slower.

The convenience is great. Strop and go!

They changed the formula huh? Do share
 
No longer supplied by Ken Schwartz. Initial PSDs are showing a broader particle size distribution, and less actual CBN.

Translation: Less consistent particle size and less abrasive in the bottle, despite the price increase.
 
Sadden said:
No longer supplied by Ken Schwartz. Initial PSDs are showing a broader particle size distribution, and less actual CBN.

Translation: Less consistent particle size and less abrasive in the bottle, despite the price increase.
Click to expand...

Proof of these claims for size and concentration?

I know the price claim is not accurate. Ken's bottles retail at $49 on on Jende and were at least that high at other retailers. While the new BRK retails for $40 and you actually get 2oz of liquid in the bottle.
 
Eric I really don't think it would up to anyone but DLT to provide any proof. The product DLT is now retailing, as I understand it, isn't the same product as provided by Ken. There is matter of trust involved. Ken's emulsion can be used on a broad range of media with no worries. Can the same be said about the DLT product?

If it were me I wouldn't put task of testing on the buyer. For those of us who do this stuff seriously there are to many unknowns with the DLT product to recommend it.

I'm sure the DLT product is a serviceable CBN emulsion for use on strops and works well in that arena from what I've heard and read.

No disrespect meant at all. Just the way I see it. I don't have a vested interest in this conversation just a preference.
 
We have done testing with the strops we sell and have only had positive reviews such as the gentleman here who started the thread. We have made no claims or comparisons to Ken's products, that I am aware of, other than having a lower per ounce cost and equivalent concentration.

You claim that we have a different concentration but want me to prove it? No one here has the equipment to do that testing, but the manufacturer does and the concentration was tested to be comparable to Ken's. Ken makes a fine product but price (now lowered) and availability to us is what ended our relationship. He has been around longer and has more testing for his products, that is certain. We can only speak to what our average customer is going to use and that is a leather strop or belt, for that this product, works great.

At the end of the day we can do all the testing in the world but the best reviews come from unbiased users, not the sellers of the product. I think that goes with just about any company.
 
DeadboxHero said:
You never go back! Ha

Well I finally broke down and dropped a c-note on some little bottles and a leather strop. I'll admit, I felt like an idiot.

But,

Wow.

I'm impressed.

This stuff cuts fast! And polishes too.

The best is that is lasts longer then I expected. It not like the compound bars that load with swarf and need to be reapplied.
This stuff keeps going without reapplication.

I've been thourh most of my knives. Still no reapplication. Wow.



Click to expand...


Anyway CBN does up ones game for sure. Whatever the source.

Always good to read a success story.
 
This is a bit awkward to bring up, but I must since there are some inaccuracies in this thread, some of which I will address in subsequent posts.

A lot of the information and knowledge developed about my CBN product is being lumped in with the replacement product that DLT and KSF are now carrying.

If the bottle does not have my name on the label,
Kenneth Schwartz, it is NOT MY PRODUCT !!!!

Both products have the Bark River label but again they are not the same product and should not be considered an equivalent product.

My CBN emulsions are still available directly from me either with or without a Bark River label.

I carry a full range of CBN emulsions from 80 to 0.1 microns rather than the more limited range.

The specifications of my CBN are significantly more precise, pure and of higher quality and higher concentration. They cost more but that's because you get more. The emulsion formulation I use in my product is also more precisely made for knife sharpening applications. I have been producing compounds for years and the difference results in producing a superior product based on years of customer use.

So PLEASE don't consider the two product lines as equivalent and when describing your experiences with the products, please specify which one you are using so I don't wind up having to defend my product against an alternate formulation.

Caveat emptor - buyer beware.

While I am a relatively small vendor, I am concerned that my products are of the highest quality and not confused by a label that looks SO similar. Competing by offering the cheapest product just isn't my style. While "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" I guess I should feel flattered lol. I'm not.

For people who spend what they do on high quality knives, I would hope that wanting to have the highest quality edges on their knives would be the obvious call to me.

Look closely at the BOTTOM of the label, where it states "Engineered by Kenneth Schwartz"

1438810923-5s.jpg


---
Ken
 
Puiblic Statement....

I have debated with Ken Schwartz several times over the past few years on two or three different subjects. He and I disagree in several areas.
However, there is one area in which there is simply no debate;
I have found that Ken Schwartz's CBN products perform better than those produced by other sources. It's as simple as that!
I've bought CBN from several different retailers, worked with them all with different steels, and for my money, nothing works as well as his.


Stitchawl
 
Ken the only thing awkward is posting in a three week old thread with a copy and paste reply from another forum, that adds little to what has already been said.

If you had noticed this thread starter is talking about OUR product and how well it works. You don't need to defend yourself when he isn't using yours. We stand behind it 100% and if someone doesn't like it we'd gladly give them their money back. We have had no complaints and no returns from several hundred bottles we have sold.

You claim several things about our product compared to yours, where is the independent data? You nearly imply that you invented this stuff, thus the flattery, when you merely took an existing product from a manufacturer and brought it to the knife/cutlery industry. There may have been some changes to their product but we're fully aware of were you get it from. When sourcing our own we had a company analyze what you have to be sure ours is a similar product that is also water soluble with the same type of CBN particles and comparable concentration. They were equipped with the proper tools to figure out such things, and I'll take their word for it. If that isn't good enough, we've been informed that someone is independently working on comparing the two products side by side and we look forward to the results.

The products do look similar. The CBN particles create the color, both are packaged in bottles, and both have labels. Granted our bottles are much more functional and convenient with a dropper top, they actually hold 2 ounces of liquid, and they have nicer water proof labels.

You are a small vendor but lacked the ability to provide us with your product in a timely manner. If it were not for that reason we would have never made our own.

You have a great product and have more knowledge & experience about sharpening than anyone else I've read on the forums, stop the BSing and sell to your customers. If the product is that much better then they will continue to buy yours but I believe an honest attempt at using our product will get you the same results. Let the product do the talking and stop trying to drag others down because we're cutting into your market.
 
Last edited:
Maybe Ken should purchase the proper membership to advertise his magic potion here.....

It's one thing to defend yourself, but that post is 1% defending and 99% selling.
 
So this thread was brought to my attention by some of my customers, so my apologies for not responding even sooner, but my response was in response to my products being brought up in this topic. And to your responses. I really don't think that topics have 3 week expiration dates. Some people have longer attention spans. And since this is a different audience some of what I write elsewhere is worth repeating here. I'm also sorry if you have trouble with that too. I read it as trying to control the message.

Since you feel free to misinform people, I unfortunately need to balance your comments about my products above.

I'm going to post the message you sent to me so people know what is going on behind the scenes to better understand why I need to defend my integrity in the matter as you attempt to go after my company.

Here's what I was greeted with yesterday morning in a note from DLT:

"Ken, we developed a line of CBN not to compete with you but simply because Derrick and I were tired of not being able to fill customer orders due to your lack of business skills or the fact you don't have the money to run your business. I'm not sure which is the case and honestly don't care. If you spent time bottling CBN instead of running your BS on forums and to customers we'd still be buying from you (even at the outrageous markup you charge). Ken: I know where you buy CBN and what you pay. Maybe that should be made public. (You mean Ken is gouging us and doesn't make it? He just puts it in bottles and triples the price? That might go well on forums ). The bottom line is I felt we'll sell ours to our customers and Ken can sell his to everyone else and we won't go after those customers as a gentleman's agreement of sorts. But since you have on numerous occasions shown you lack any class and need to run your mouth saying things which are not based in fact those days are over. My suggestion to you is to fasten your seatbelt Ken. I'm done letting you pop off your BS to people. I'll now call your BS and publicly disclose some info about your CBN. You'll also see our product in full distribution. Just remember Ken, you asked for this with your half-truths, lies and false claims about our product. Good luck."

Somehow I'm supposed to take the attacks on my reputation and my products with silence and just let him run me over like roadkill. He has contacted MY customers asking them to do comparisons for him. Exactly what I have been accused of doing. Two sets of rules.

This is not an argument I'm enjoying being dragged into. But when my reputation is being impugned and my business attacked and my products copied, I have no choice.

So it's time to clear the air and let you know what the truth is. Not Jason's view of the world but the facts. Yes Facts. What becomes of this - I don't know. But to be cowered into silence is just not something I can accept. So here we go.

At no time was the supply of my CBN products a problem. Jason asked if he could carry some of my other products - products for the EdgePro, etc. I am a one person company and I simply could not supply him with these additional products instead of not providing my loyal customers over the years with these products . But the products I was supplying him - my CBN - was never a problem. The result. He decided not to carry my CBN products as a punishment to me for not supplying other products to him. THAT'S the truth. I could have supplied him with whatever CBN he needed.

Then some time later he decides to make his own competitive product. This product LOOKS like my product to MY Bark River customers. I am DAILY getting contacted asking questions about my product with customers who actually bought this stuff thinking DLT CBN is my product! It is a support nightmare for me. I am not going to do product support for a competitor's product. So yes I tell them the TRUTH.

That the label looks almost identical is taking advantage and damaging my reputation. This is obviously purposefully riding on my reputation. He could have had a Bark River label that looked different but chose not to. A shameful business practice purposely tricking the customer into getting something they are not actually getting.

He even states that he took my product and had it analyzed for the express purpose of COPYING my product! Not make a product based on his own work but based on my YEARS of product development. Just a straight rip off of my work. Another shameful business practice. At this point I am truly blessed that I did not further open up my portfolio of products to expose them to being copied too. And I have NO intention of ever selling him another product as I don't need anyone's business that I can't trust.

Fortunately his knockoff copy is an inferior product. With him threatening to compete against me even more widely, after already taking some of MY customers, I have no choice but to disclose WHY it is an inferior product. I'm being accused of spreading falsehoods (AKA lying) about his product with him telling people on the various internet media and direct communication that his product is equivalent or even superior to my product. My statement that it is an inferior product is based on DATA. So I have no choice but to present the FACTS to back up my assertions.

I am NOT pleased to present this data. Why? I will be training my competitors how to try to improve their products to approach the quality of my products.

I had a bottle of DLT CBN purchased and sent directly to a lab for analysis. Specifically the 0.5 micron DLT CBN emulsion. Yes I like to know who I am competing against. I did not receive the product, still am not in possession of it and never possessed it, so there is no possibility of me tampering with it in any way. It was sent directly to the lab. I will present the data next to back up what I have said - that it is of a lower concentration, lower purity not completely water soluble, and less precisely formulated in terms of particle size.

If customers want to get one product over the other, the market can decide that. But it is my duty to let customers know what they are getting. I have too much respect for my customers to offer them anything less than FACTS.


(continued in the next post)
 
So let's go over the facts. First let me show some pictures of my compounds. These pictures are at a higher magnification than is available with light microscopy. They are taken with a Scanning Electron Microscope or SEM.

This first picture is of quarter micron polycrystalline diamond, taken at 30,000 times magnification. Note that the particles are individual particles. They are also all of the same material - poly diamond They are all of relatively the same size and the particles are not stuck together in clumps (called particle agglomeration). And the average particle size is a quarter micron, as can be seen by comparing the particles to the bar at the bottom of the image showing what length is representing a 333 nanometer length (333 nanometer is 0.333 microns).

1439076801-SEMquartermicronpoly30000magnification.jpg


Here's another example of my CBN 16 micron product

1439076991-cBN1.jpg



Again note that the particles are very uniform in size and the correct size. No junk is floating around either of unknown substances.

Now let's look at the DLT product.

1439077253-S1817__0.5_DLT_-1.jpg


This is a lower resolution light microscope image. It wasn't necessary to go beyond this lower level of resolution because the problems are pretty obvious. You will see particles sticking together. These lumps are an example of particle agglomeration effectively doubling or tripling the effective particle size. So you are getting a coarser finish by a factor of 2-3x more from these coarser particles. Not good. This is due to a poor design of the emulsion allowing surface tension and electrostatic charges to cause this clinging together.

You also see these hugh stray particles floating around in the mix. I have no idea what these are, but what I do know is that they should not be there at all! These are contaminants and many times coarser that the stated 0.5 micron product you are supposed to be getting.

(continued)
 
So now that we have seen some pictures let's get a bit more technical. Let's actually look at particle sizes. Particle size is measured. The test is called a PSD test (Particle size Distribution) Data.

Let's look at my product - 0.5 micron CBN Emulsion and then compare it to DLT CBN.

So a PSD test looks at particle size. It computes the average particle size. It also analyzes the distribution of particles forming a bell curve or distribution curve, showing how many particles fall in the range of each micron value or bin. This is both graphed on a log scale plot and individually reported.

Here's my product. The report is split into 3 images, the first reporting overall summary data, the next a graphical representation of the data and the third showing actual percentages of each particle size.

1439077559-KSSCBN1.jpg


1439077580-KSSCBN2.jpg


1439077591-KSSCBN3.jpg


Note a few things. In panel one, the median particle size is 0.497 microns on a 0.5 micron product. That is exceptional!

In panel 2 The bar graph shows (again the x axis is a log scale) that it peaks at 0.5 microns with particles as fine as 0.2 microns and as coarse as 2 microns. The accompanying curve shows the accumulative percent below a given particle size, so that by 2 microns there is nothing coarser detectable - it has accounted for all the particles present. You read this curve using the right hand scale.

In the third panel you see the detailed breakdown showing percent of particles at various microns. The overwhelming amount of particles fall between between 0.7 to 0.4 microns with all of the particles falling between 0.226 and 1.981 microns. This is what 'the good stuff' looks like - 'Engineered by Kenneth Schwartz'

(continued)
 
Now let's look at what is being claimed to be 'equivalent' to my product or better and see if these claims are supported.

Here's the psd data for this product

1439077825-DLTCBN1.jpg


1439077835-DLTCBN2.jpg


1439077847-DLTCBN3.jpg


So now that we see a median particle size of 0.873 microns - roughly 0.9 microns - closer to a 1 micron product than the advertised 0.5 microns. So we already know that the product is not correctly labelled but exaggerated as to it's actual fineness.

Now look at the graph. The graph shows a much more spread out distribution with a median particle size - the highest bar almost double what it should be. Now look at the right tail of the graph - There are particles floating around in there as large as 20 microns in a 0.5 micron product! So while you think you have a 32,000 grit preparation you have particles COARSER than 1000 grit in the mix! Also note how the line lingers not reaching 100 % until 20 microns.

So in summary the majority of particles in this preparation are over 1 micron in a 0.5 micron product, 5 percent of the particles are over 4 microns (4000 grit) and it is an overall poorly graded distribution. Indeed if we actually look at particles under 0.5 microns only slightly more than 3% qualify and being a bit more generous - under 0.6 microns only 18.7% of what's in the product qualifies. There are also stray large particles of unknown substances that are significant impurities.

I base my comments on FACTS. I don't appreciate being told that I am spreading BS out on the net. I've been ASKED for proof to back up my facts, so that's what I've presented. If I am anything I'm straightforward and I don't appreciate being intimidated into silence with threats.

---
Ken
 
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