Thread: Conditioning Kanoyama Canvas: Iwasaki

Originally Posted by rideon66

Oh it is a spindle type.

I believe that I’d stick to hand washing it, that seems to work as well.

Originally Posted by Steve56

You could just cut a little off the leather to make the lengths match Will, rofl.

Hmmmm I’m thinking not Steve.....but thanks for the idea, maybe you can try cutting yours and let me know how it turns out, I also need to send you stone to work with and tell me what you think, I’m not having much luck with it

Most cloth has some type of sizing in it to shape and size the fabric, especially natural fibers, many use starch, waxes, and other stiffeners. Done to individual yarn prior to weaving to strength and smooth the yarn during the weaving process, and again to the finished weave to maintain size and shape. The woven linen is purchased in bulk by the strop makers, already sized. Some may have added additional sizing or paste for performance.

If you want to clean linen it must be washed several times, one or two cycles in a washing machine will not get it clean. The dirt and grit are in the weave. Soaking in soapy water, scrubbing with a stiff brush, and soaking in clean water over night and vinegar will remove the soap. It is clean when your rinse water is clean.

Rolling on a suspended rolling pin will stretch the weave back to original length. Roll when damp several times until dry to length. Rolling will also loosen the fibers and weave to make the linen soft very pliable and much more effective for stropping.

When damp, the linen will stretch, you can also stretch to length and block by clamping linen to a board or flat surface. Blocking is routinely done with clothing, particularly heavy weave sweaters to shape and size clothing.

I have some washed linen stretched to the length of the leather and some a bit shorter. It makes no difference in performance. Rolling on the other hand, softens the linen and improve performance dramatically.

Look at your linen with magnification, if you see black spots in the weave it is dirt and grit, probably larger than you lowest grit stone in the weave and will scratch your bevel and chip the edge.

That’s been exactly my experience Marty, I’m cleaning up a vintage piece just for the fun of it, but ‘fun’ it certainly hasn’t been. Out of the box it was dirty and gritty, and chunks of white material came off like sand. Two - three trips In the washer didn’t do much. I washed it 6-7 times in lacquer thinner and that began to move whatever white stuff was in it - that’s all I had given the scarcity of alcohol. I thought that it was pretty clean after that and hand washing, but putting a shave ready Gold Dollar on it resulted in straight shiny segments on the edge - it still had coarse grit in it. And hey, this is what Gold Dollars are for.

I have since bought a 5-gal drum of 99.5% methanol racing fuel, methanol is a better solvent, won’t penetrate most nitrile gloves but is more expensive given hazard fees and shipping. I’ve soaked the linen 3 times now in a mason jar an the methanol is beginning to get It pretty clean. It’s on soak 4 now. The first 2 methanol washes had cloudy white solids in them.

I’ll update the thread if I ever get the darn thing clean enough to strop on, lol.

This is of course not practical except as an educational experience, but I actually bought the methanol to ‘de-oil’ Japanese naturals that had been used with honing oil/solution, and it excels at that, much better than isopropyl, though methanol is more toxic.