Honing oils

[ken hatch]

I really don't remember minding the smell of Kerosene. It is what it is....at one point in time, you could hardly avoid Kerosene and I am just old enough to be in that group. So maybe for some of us it became one of those things you decided to tolerate.

I am going to end up just locating somebody nearby that still sells it at the pump....Call them up to make sure at least somebody there knows they are identified as a source. That should increase the chance of actually getting it there to something like .....oh say 20% and then I'll go try to get some.

James,

We must be contemporaries, During my early years on the farm Kerosene along with coal was our main source of heat and cooking. I buy mine at Home Depot, it is a little expensive per gallon but it is close, the packaging is convenient, and they normally have it. Which reminds me, I emptied my jug today and need to make a HD run for more.

ken

[James Nugnes]

Would be interested to know if your HD is still carrying kerosene or if they only have the kerosene substitute in the store.

The web site does not even mention the substitute and they tell you they have kerosene in stock. Then when you get to the store there is no mention of 1-K kerosene at all and the only inventory they have is the kerosene substitute.

Kerosene was certainly an unavoidable necessity of life when I was growing up being as it was used for multiple purposes. In fact even if homes were not using it for its more common usages, almost every household I knew about (friends, neighbors, our own) had kerosene around because in a pinch you could fall back to using kerosene for so many things. It was a lead pipe cinch that every house had some and I could walk into a neighbor's house not knowing where their spare kerosene was in about 1 minute I would have found their 1-5 gal. can of it. It was that ingrained into our thinking and many of our processes.

[steven c newman]

Wallmart sell the K-1.

Can't stand the smell of the stuff...

Sellers uses a type of Window Cleaner ( Windex??)

I have been trying out an oil from 3in1. Used for air Tools. It is a lot thinner than their "regular" 3in1 oil.

I don't leave things like my oil stones soaking in a can somewhere, too good a chance that the "Shop Cat" will knock it over on his way to catch a mouse.

Gas stations do sell K-1, but it has a red dye in it. FIL used to call the stuff "Coal Oil".

[James Nugnes]

I might be in luck. The "other" home depot that is farther away from me might have kerosene there. There is a wal-mart farther away than that and they might have it as well. It is a bit frustrating that the closer stores don't carry it...especially here in New England where you would think it is more common.

Wish you could get the stuff in 1 gal metal cans. But so far I am only seeing it sold that way by the case, 4 gal. at a time. I hate those plastic jugs.

[Tony Zaffuto]

For my oilstones, I use "Marvel Mystery Oil", which is fairly thin. For the past several years however, I'm using my Spyderco stones, unlike George, without any water (may try), but like George, occasionally stropping. Seems a bit quicker than the oil stones.

Of my three Spyderco's, only the ultrafine needed a bit of flattening on an extra coarse diamond stone.

[george wilson]

pro or amateur woodworking practices cannot allow for the cat knocking things over. I just keep our cats out of the shop altogether. Dogs too,since I also have a machinist shop in there,with a number of very sharp metal chips laying about.

But,one night,someone left our stupidist cat in my shop(which my wife has the 2nd. story of). That cat tried jumping out of both front windows,knocking down 2 or 3 of my small parts cabinets and spilling thousands of small screws all over the floor in the process. I'll never have the patience or energy to sort them all out again. I do mean thousands. I'll just have to dig through the little drawers full of screws to find what I want from now on.

As for smell,perhaps odorless paint thinner would make just as good a honing medium as kerosene. I don't see why not,really. Or,just get Spydercos like me and spritz a bit of slightly soapy water on your ceramic or diamond stones. No smell,no oily stuff to get on your work,or possibly give you arthritis. Turpentine certainly can.

[Warren Mickley]

Years ago I used a mixture of kerosene and motor oil for honing. It was nice because I could adjust the viscosity for the best action and suspension of steel particles. I think I used more kerosene in the mixture when it was cooler in the shop.

When I started woodworking full time I had trouble in the winter with coughing in the evenings. Then when I thought to discontinue the kerosene, my cough cleared up right away. I had my sharpening table right near my bench and was sharpening several hundred tools a week. For someone just working evenings or someone with a big shop full of machinery, the kerosene would not be as much of a problem.

There is a reason why we call these stones oil stones. It is because the thicker oil is much better at suspending the steel. If one is satisfied with WD40 or mineral spirits, one might just as well use water, which is considerably cheaper.
Centuries ago workers used oil even though it was probably relatively more expensive then than now.

[Zach Dillinger]

For my oilstones, I use "Marvel Mystery Oil", which is fairly thin.

+1 for MMO. I keep lots of it around anyway for the Model T and it works well and smells great.

[James Nugnes]

Hope this reply ends up in a place where people can view it. Just trying to save people time and aggravation.

Home Depot here in NE and maybe nationwide is no longer selling 1 gal jugs of Kerosene. They only have 1 gal jugs of the kerosene substitute for sale. They now only sell Kerosene, 5 gal at a time, in two 2.5 gal jugs for $43.95 for the 5 gals. They do not stock in on the shelf and you have to ask for it. They keep it in the warehouse under the heaviest concentration of their fire control system. I would not keep 5 gals of kerosene anywhere in my house or even in my backyard shed as I just do not go through it that quickly and don't like the idea of having 5 gals of that stuff in one location.

Walmart has quart containers of Colman branded kerosene. I bought 3 of those just to make sure I had some. They charge just under $6.00 per quart. But you end up with a small opening at the top of a 1 quart plastic container. So pour is probably more controllable and waste is likely not so much of an issue.

Around here, Lowes appears to be one of the few places remaining that will sell 1 gal. containers of Kerosene. You pay less for it than you will pay getting quarts from Walmart. You do end up with that big opening at the top of the container which can be inconvenient for our purposes. Some of us are just using straight kerosene on their stones and I am likely to experiment with a mix of maybe 10-20% honing oil (whatever that is.....food safe mineral oil I suspect) and Kerosene. But mix or not, I can't imagine running through the stuff like water just using it as honing fluid/honing oil ....whatever we want to call this when used for this purpose.

Having just said, "we won't be running through it like water" but having never used 100% kerosene for honing before, the thought strikes me that maybe it does take a fair amount of kerosene to hone. I can't imagine that we would be achieving more than a slick of kerosene across the top of the stone. But how long does that stay a slick???? Can't be that long. So for the guys using straight kerosene, I am guessing you are reapplying kerosene pretty often just to keep the stone slick....is that right?

In fact, I would imagine that as the kerosene dries off, you are left with a little pile or line of very fine metal filings along or just off the part of the surface where you are doing the honing.

Regardless of whether I go get myself a 1 gal jug of the stuff, I am happy to have these small quart containers from Coleman. Even if I buy a gal of the stuff, I am likely to transfer it via funnel to one of these when its empty and use these for purposes of transfer to a mix of some sort if I end up deciding to mix the Kerosene with honing oil.

[James Nugnes]

Used to use Marvel Mystery Oil in my vintage car as well. Yes it is very much thinner for sure than Norton or likely anybody's contemporary honing oil. Red in color as I recall. Not sure I want to dye my oil stones red but the consistency might be just about right.

[Tom M King]

Completely unrelated to honing oils, but I'm going to stick these couple of kerosene stories in here: I used to develop some land on the lake here, and we had some pretty good sized burning piles. I kept Kerosene in an Indian Fire Pump (and water in another one) to get fires going, along with a 13hp Billy Goat blower. Saturn V rocket engines used a combination of kerosene and liquid oxygen to push pretty daggone big things into orbit. With the blower and that kerosene Indian pump, you could easily see how it did it.

When I was about 9 years old on my first scout camping trip, it got down in the low single digits. It was so cold the first morning that the leaders (men) couldn't get kerosene to light to start a fire.

[Tom M King]

They might as well stop putting the red dye in it. It's been a good number of years since kerosene was cheaper than diesel fuel. The red dye also goes in offroad diesel, which like kerosene, doesn't have road tax added into the price. There's a BIG fine for catching red fuel in an onroad truck. I had my pickup checked once, but it's never had red fuel in it. My tractor runs red though. Today here, diesel was 2.11 at the pump, and kerosene 3.69.

[steven c newman]

Had a two and a half car garage as a shop for a few years.....Had a Barrel stove for heat, I also had an old "Kero-sun" heater. used to get a metal can to haul the 5 gallons out to the heater. Heater used 1 gallon a day. Soo, the can was five days of shop time. Barrel Stove ran on wood scraps, yesterday's papers, leaves and whatever else needed burnt. It would keep the area around it about 80 degrees or so. The "Coal Oil" heater would keep the rest warmer than the outside.

Come to think about it....that old shop never had any "mistakes" sitting around very long. Once a month during the winter, I'd take a couple "blank" rounds, toss them into the stove back under the opening for the stove pipe.......POP! All the built up soot ( and worse) got blown up out of the pipe. Worked for me...

[Zach Dillinger]

Used to use Marvel Mystery Oil in my vintage car as well. Yes it is very much thinner for sure than Norton or likely anybody's contemporary honing oil. Red in color as I recall. Not sure I want to dye my oil stones red but the consistency might be just about right.

I use it on my trans ark just about every day. No noticeable dying effect has taken place.

[Kees Heiden]

There is a reason why we call these stones oil stones. It is because the thicker oil is much better at suspending the steel. If one is satisfied with WD40 or mineral spirits, one might just as well use water, which is considerably cheaper.

Or spit! If I can believe the stories, many an old hand spat on his stones instead of using oil.