JOST ABRASIVES – First impressions – excellent!

[FenceFurniture]

As I am apparently the only person in the forum to have heard of these abrasives, I guess I should put up a review of them. I first enquired in this thread in mid-June to see if anyone knew about them, and received zero replies. The review will follow after a few background paragraphs.

These abrasives are available in all the usual shapes, and have a patented hole pattern that will suit any sander’s hole pattern. This, by itself, is a breakthrough for reducing the number of different abrasives that need to be kept on hand. It was this fact and the claim of the very best dust extraction available that drew me to researching this brand. During this research I trawled American forums, and it seems to be extremely popular amongst those that use it (which is quite a few people). In fact they all seem to be Jost diehards, and won’t use anything else. It is popular enough in the USA for Jost to have set up a factory there in 2007. Sadly, and just like my frozen gourmet food business, the GFC wiped out any potential before it even got off the ground, and the abrasives now have to be imported again into the USA. This obviously created short term supply difficulties for a while, and the users were very disappointed that they could no longer get them.

The finer grits have a 2mm layer of sponge to account for irregularities in the sanding pad or the timber surface.

These Superpad abrasives also seem to be very popular with Gyprock sanders, because of the excellent DE.

Claims and statements by the manufacturer:

• Can outlive other sandpapers by up to 4x in the coarser grits, and up to 8x in the finer grits (and this includes a well known German abrasive which is actually made in Finland - figure out the rest for yourself).
• The best dust extraction possible
• Suits any dust extraction hole pattern
• Is 93% abrasive and 7% holes, whereas Abranet is 50/50%. Therefore (and this is my assumption) regardless of durability, these abrasives must get the job done in half the time of Abranet (Mirka), and therefore half the wear. I guess it might be a bit like a sharper edge stays sharper longer.

These abrasives cost considerably less than the other “rather” expensive one, so if they last 4x (or even 2x) as long then that makes them pretty damn cheap. It is highly likely that they can be made available in 50 metre rolls of any desired width. And that is the second BIG breakthrough. Not only are uncut rolls cheaper to start with, but this means that I’ll only have to stock one roll of (say) six grits, and I’ll have everything covered. Currently I have an Aldis sander (circle, delta, square) and a Makita (the usual rectangle). Very soon I’ll have a Festool RO 90 (circle and delta) and an ETS150 (150mm circle). That would make 7 shapes/hole patterns in 6 different grits to stock. 42 different papers. Yeah right. To be fair, I would probably only have 3 coarse grits for the Aldi, same for the Makita. I was going to say that I’ll probably even drop the Makita, but I don’t think I will, so I will have to supply it with paper. That means I’d be down to 36 different papers. Great. By buying a roll of 150mm, I can get all the shapes I need from it, and that means stocking 6 different papers. Now that is great! It will also mean having a cheap scissors supply in hand until I can import a disc cutter (about $120 and does different sizes).

WOODTURNERS
Once or twice per year they do a run of the same abrasives with a heat resistant backing for a German Woodturner’s Supplies retailer. There is always a supply left over……
Two or three of our significant woodturners will be testing this paper in the very near future. One of them has done review/s in this forum on other papers for woodturning, and so will be doing a head to head with this and the other “best” abrasive he could source. That too will be mightily interesting.

THE REVIEW:
I had some samples sent from Jost (as in “yost” as in “host”) in Germany, and they arrived the day after the Colt drills delivery, early this week (must have been German Week). These samples were 150mm discs ranging from 60 to 3000 grit. Five other members have been sent some samples from these, and they may report in due course.

EQUIPMENT AND PAPERS

• Aldi ROS Sander ($50) with square pad attached, and using ill-fitting 6” discs (round discs, square pad)
• Aldi Dust Extractor ($89)
• Timber: Spotted Gum (hardness 10) Dimensions sanded 1500 x 135mm
• Jost Superpad P in grits 60, 80, 150, 220, 400 (P is just a normal sandpaper)
• Jost Superpad SG in grits 600, 1500 (SG is very much like Abranet)
• Jost Superpad SG2 grits 1800, 2500, 3000 (SG is very much like Abralon or Platen)
• Jost “Dust Disc” to remove final dust from the job

Timber surface as delivered (the lighting for all pics like this one remained unchanged, to show the surface consistently)


The cupping is about 1.5-2mm


The timber had received pretty poor storage at the local hardware: under a large lean-to with possible exposure to rain under heavy wind (this is the Blue Mountains, and it happens a great deal). As a result, the surface was very rough, even though it been dressed to some extent before sale to the hardware. It’s hard to estimate (and even harder to see in the pictures) but I would say the roughness was 0.5 to 1mm in depth. The length also had some pretty mean cupping: 2mm at one end tapering to 1.5mm at the other. This makes sanding difficult.


THE ACTION
Normally I would have run it over a planer to dress it properly and eliminate the cupping, but as I don’t have a planer……………
I started with 60 grit, giving the job a thorough sanding to get rid of all the roughness. There was hardly any dust at all – a few tiny (2mm) dots that dropped out of the holes when the sander was taken off the job. Working my way through 80 to 3000 in the grits described above, there was very little (negligible) dust on the job after each grit, but dust did collect in the gum line holes (as you would expect).

After sanding to 3000 I finished with a compressed air blow job, and then the “Dust Disc” to remove the remaining dust off the job


Then a single coat of Ubeaut Traditional Wax:




The difference in roughness between the two sides is now extremely apparent, in fact the unsanded side feels like 80 grit paper.

None of the discs were worn out, and strangely the finer grades are the ones that have the most life left in them. They hardly seem to be degraded at all, and for me that’s miraculous, as I know how much Wet & Dry I would have gone through in grits 800 to 2000 – bloody heaps! There was some crumbling of abrasive from the 600 SG and to a lesser extent the 1500 SG.

Pictures of discs at the end of the job. Note that these were straight off the sander – no tapping, blowing etc:

60 grit (Superpad P) after the whole job (evidence of the cupping in the plank)


150 grit


400 grit


600 grit (Superpad SG)


2500 grit (Superpad SG2)


"Dust Disc"


SUMMARY
This paper has lived up to everything I had come to expect from it. It’s fantastic. It will be very interesting to see what the far more experienced members think. Three of them are Festool sander users, and so I assume they use Festool abrasives (I never have). To sum it up in the minimum of words: “Clean, aggressive, smooth, durable & easy stock management”. Anything else needed?Oh yeah – cheap-ish. Certainly the cheapest top quality paper that I can find.

CONCLUSION
When I get my two Festool sanders, I will not be finding out what Festool papers or Abranet/Abralon are like. Six to eight rolls of this stuff will do me right, I reckon.

[Rattrap]

Thanks for that FF, Jost sounds very interesting. I'm always cutting up 150mm disks to suit various sanding tasks, it would be great to buy the paper by the roll.

[rsser]

Thanks FF. Velly interestink.

[Gaza]

so the roll is valco backed with holes?

[FenceFurniture]

Yes that's right Gaza

[NeilS]

FenceFurniture organised for some of the Jost abrasives to be sent to me for evaluation. He was interested to know how well they performed as a power sanding abrasive for woodturners.

I have commenced my evaluation report here.

[Groggy]

I got to try some Jost abrasives today and was pretty happy with the results!

Observations on Karri:

- I found they did not allow the dust to clear as well as some other quality abrasives do, and they tended to store dust under the pad in the velcro. This does not mean the amount removed is not sufficient, it just means some other pads are better at that function, probably due to their larger hole size. I did not experience any problem because of it.

- A little trickier to centre correctly, once again, not a problem but a touch more care needed.

- I used the 180, 220, 320 and 400. I liked that I could feel the paper cutting the wood.

- I sanded a surface that was 1/3 the width of the pad, another that was full pad width and yet another that was full pad width with flutes in it. The paper cut quickly and left a very nice surface.

- Finally. I also sanded a 10mm roundover. It left a very nice finish on the curve and seemed to behave just as well on end grain.

I can't say how long these will last in comparison to more expensive abrasives as I only had a smallish job to do, but so far I would certainly use these disks, especially if they are cheaper.
I like the dust removal disk, it does a nice job of getting the dust out.

[wolften]

I'll put in my $0.02 worth about the Jost Superpad P abrasives that FF kindly sent to me fo a bit of a muck around.
The 2 lower grits 120 and 180 I found cut quite well, not any better than the Festool abrasives IMO.
But, the 320 and 400 just kept on cutting and cutting and cutting. I was quite pleasantly surprised at how well they performed.

I used these abrasives on some Tassie Blackwood, Tassie Oak and Kwila.
Of course these abrasives were used on a 150/3 ETS with my trusty Taurus vac doing the sucking.

As with any abrasive used on a powered sander, a vac is a must, to keep the dust away from you, the sanding surface, and from the abrasive face for longer usage.

I will definitly use the Jost papers depending on price, as they would have to be cheaper than what I can get Festool paper from U.S. suppliers.
A little birdie just informed me that they very well could lots cheaper
Just as a side note...walked onto my job last week and lo and behold the gyprock sanders were there using a powered nonfestool sander connected to a non festool vac using Jost 280 grit paper, 8" or 9" can't remember which one which they paid approx $8 per disk
Cheers

Glenn

[FenceFurniture]

Tweet, tweet.

[Lignum]

Finally got round to trying the Jost sandpaper that FenceFurniture kindly sent me and found it to be a mixed result. The quality of the paper and the sanding results are as expected very good, and compare generally with the other quality disks, but on closer examination don’t have the quality of sanding finish of the Festool multi hole fast flow disks, or the longevity of the Klingspor disks, and fall short on overall sanding finish and longevity of my long time preferred disks SIA 1941 (open coat aluminium oxide)

The one area they were badly let down is with the extra multi hole extraction, I cant help think its more of a gimmick to place their brand in a so called unique area of the market.

Using my Festool CT26 as extraction the Jost disks were a clear second to the other mentioned brands in extraction and I also question the long term damage they may cause to the sanders Velcro pad.

The first two photos show a SIA then Jost disk on my ROS. With the Festool CT26 running on full suction, the sander was placed on the flat surface of my 8” jointer with both air hose and power cord hanging of the end wanting to tilt the sander. With the SIA attached the sander is clearly suctioned to the table, and with the Jost attached it was unable to hold itself down.

As you can see in next photos, the Festool 150/3 ROS has the multi hole fast flow disk (32 hole)

Using a Jost disk on the pad and visually trying to align as many holes as possible, I then placed a my preferred eight hole SIA over that disk for comparison. As you can see, very little direct air suction is possible and a good percentage of the dust is actually sucked back through the Velcro as shown on the back of a (lightly) used Jost disk.

I have only used a handful of disks for demo purposes and found the Festool velcro pad more dirty and clogged with dust than unusual. I would be interested to see the effect after a few hours heavy use on a large project. I don’t think it would be very good for the disks.

The other interesting disk was the dust remover. That’s a brilliant idea and also worked with mixed results. Its perfect until the pad itself clogs, no doubt due to the tiny holes like the sandpaper as the pad itself was loading with dust an little was going back into the extraction, but every minute or so a quick wipe on my shirt (with sander still going) seemed to expel the dust and was ok to go again.

It’s a ripper idea that cleans and removes dust ready for finishing. This is one that I hope other manufacturers jump on board with and make it with a standard 8 hole.

And finally, I didn’t get around (yet) to the fine pads as I usually use them with friction oil finishing, so next time I am oiling I can compare them to the Festool Plated which I use regularly.

Thanks again FF

[Mr Brush]

Lignum - I have to agree with you about the SIA disks.....I'm gradually replacing my Festool sanding disks with the equivalent SIA 1940/41 alox (blue) as my Festool run out.

I've also tried samples of the SIA 1950/1951 zirconia (purple) disks, which work just as well and seem to last even longer (!), but I haven't checked the pricing on these to see if they are a viable option.

The main benefit with the SIA products seems to be that they just go on and on and on......and finish is at least equivalent to the Festool.

[FenceFurniture]

Just looking around the SIA site and they recommend 1941 and 1951 for automotive (i.e. paint) use. The 1960 range is for wood (grits up to 600) which Al.Ox and stearate coated. As I recall there are drawbacks to stearate coating, depending on the finish that will be applied, but I don't know anything else about stearate (anyone else know?). The other confusing thing is that the 1960 is "open coat" and "closed coat"! EH?!

Lignum and Mr Brush, you must have a reason for using the 1941/51 series over the 1960 range...........

I wonder which range would be suitable for grits finer than 600?

[Mr Brush]

Never heard of the SIA 1960, but the rep. I spoke to mentioned a 7940 fine buffing abrasive in grits from 240 up to 4000.

They also do the most amazing closed-cell foam-backed alox pads (9214 SIAsoft?) which are superb for hand finishing. I have samples of a 1000 and 1500 pad, which give an excellent finish while also being very long-lasting.

The only problem with SIA is that you need one of their reps handy to decipher which products from their extensive range are best for the job........ As a company they definitely live primarily in the automotive finishing space, but also have a lot of products suitable for woodworking applications.

[FenceFurniture]

.........And finally, I didn’t get around (yet) to the fine pads as I usually use them with friction oil finishing, so next time I am oiling I can compare them to the Festool Plated which I use regularly.

Terry, did you get to try the fine grits for friction oiling?