Here is the Clara Premium jute rope review by Sjox. Clara Preium is our new flagship loose laid jute which offers the longevity and low maintenance of double yarn favourites like my Tossa but with the feel and handling of a top of the range Japanese asanawa.
Non-toxic JBO alternative
The first thing that seemed different about these ropes hit me right when I opened the package with 128 meters of Clara rope was the smell. It smells markedly different from the normal jute batching oil smell, which can be quite unpleasant and requires quite a lot of treatment to get rid of, and even then can persist for a long time. This rope is allegedly produced with a non-toxic substitute of jute batching oil, and hence there is no requirement to treat it further, which is great.
Day-one flexibility
As soon as I handled the rope I noticed how flexible it felt. With these ropes there is no need to run them through carabiners endlessly to make them flexible. The rope doesn’t have a will of its own like new ropes usually have. They don’t want to go anywhere or curl up if twisted slightly. They feel a lot like my very old and very used 5mm Tossa flexibility wise. But the Tossa sure as hell wasn’t that flexible when i got them.
Soft and stable
The third thing I noticed right away was the softness of their fluff. Especially my Osaka was much more prickly in the beginning. This is probably due to the very different construction of these ropes, which is really a huge improvement. The Clara is 5 yarns per ply * 7 plys per strand * 3 strands = 105 yarns in total which is a much higher number than for Tossa which is 2*8*3 = 48, but at essentially the same diameter, which means that each yarn is much thinner. The Osaka on the other hand does not have twisted yarns, which are then twisted further into plys. 12 yarns, which are quite thick individually, are twisted directly into plys. This is what makes the Osaka more unstable as there is less structure at the low level. The lay of Clara is pretty loose, but doesn’t feel like it is ready to disintegrate as loose laid rope sometimes does. The Clara just feels like a more relaxed version of a well used Tossa. It shares the high number of yarns with the Amanawa, which is extremely flexible as well. However, the Amanawa is linen, which has a lot of different characteristics, such as very low stretch, which make them a bit unforgiving to uneven tension.
A peculiar feature of the Clara is that it has an S-lay rather than a Z-lay. It simply twists in the opposite direction from all the other rope I have. It doesn’t really matter – or so i thought. It turns out that if you want to make thistle knots, as I do, you have to make them in the opposite direction to keep tension in the twist of the rope close to the knot.
Pale, perfect fiber
The jute fiber itself is very, very light in colour in the batch I got and I like that. There are no defects in the rope at all, which is quite a feat. Normally there would be at least a few. There are no dark fibers to be found. Essentially perfect fiber in my view.
The Clara holds knots very well like the Osaka and unlike the Tossa. On the website it says that the diameter of the Clara is about 5.5mm once settled down. To me it feels more like an even 5mm compared to my other rope bought as 5mm. This makes for rather small knots, which is great if you like a simple aesthetic in your ties. I’ve only tied with the ropes once, but from the looks of everything it is going to resemble my old favorite the 5mm Tossa*, but with better handling and better knots. I think this will be my new favorite. By the way, now I know why women keep buying shoes when they don’t need them.
* Note from Esinem: It will be a lot softer and more flexible than the most well-used Tossa. Our sample set needed no breaking in and is similar in feel, weigh and handling to the best Japanese asanawa.