Honing oils

[James Nugnes]

So I am going back to natural stone for sharpening. I am not giving up entirely on my TOMZ Sharpener and in fact I like it a great deal. I just want to have a solid sharpening system for when I am away from power and for when I really have to repair an edge.

I use abrasive paper discs from Work Sharp on my TOMZ and its all good. I go from 400 to 1,000 to 3,000 to 6,000 grit. The discs wear quickly but they are not that expensive. I have been using slips to really repair edges and have decided to get full size stones that will comprise a complete Natural oil stone sharpening system. Plus 400 in paper does not seem to me to be anything like the equivalent of 200-400 grit in stone.

I have been able to come into some vintage bench stones and decided what the heck, I would go with those. I will be using a medium India, possibly a soft arkie, a vintage pike lily white and a vintage Norton hard translucent in instances when I am working through a grit progression. However I will take the lily white and leather with compound only when needing something when I am remote from the shop.

I am wondering though if folks think the contemporary honing oils are thinned down in one way or another to be the equivalent of a 50/50 oil and kerosene mix or if folks are mixing either mineral spirits or kerosene in with the oil to make the equivalent mix of the vintage oils.

Trying to compare 30 and 40 year ago experiences using natural stone with today's oils. Looking at and working with this generation of Norton honing oil, I certainly know it is not thinned with kerosene. Nor do I think it is as thin straight from the can as a 50/50 mix would be. In fact straight from the can, these oils seem a tad bit heavier than they should be even for use on contemporary oil stones. More concerned with not gumming up the works on the lily white than anything else and think it best to get as close to a vintage honing oil formula as I can get for use with that stone. By the same token if I end up with a mix I will likely use this mix on all the stones.

Are folks mixing for the most part especially with vintage stones or are folks more often just using contemporary honing oil straight from the can?

Thanks

[ken hatch]

James,

First, I had to google TOMZ Sharpener to figure out what you were talking about so take my post with the normal grain of.....

I use oil stones some newish others vintage, I can't tell the difference between the old ones and newer ones. For the most part I use straight kerosene, occasionally if there is a can of honing oil of some brand on the shelf I'll put a squirt in the kerosene but most of the time not. I agree the commercial honing oils are too thick for me but Norton pays folks to figure out what works best. I just know I've never had a problem with straight kerosene.

ken

[Kees Heiden]

I use WD40 now. Only availbale in expensive spray cans overhere, but it convenient, and on the natural Washita and Arkansas stones I only need a tiny little spritz. So a little goes a long way. I also have some babyoil which is thicker. I am not quite sure what I like better. Make sure you get the baby oil without the fragrants! It is cheaper and doesn't smell so badly.

I have a manmade oilstone, something like an India. It works allright, but it really sucks oil like nothing! WD40 works, but needs to be replenished often. When I need to remove a lot I use this stone first, otherwise I start with the washita. I have kind of a love hate relationship with this stone. I also don't like how it tears a towel apart when cleaning the stone after use. But it works very well.

[ken hatch]

I use WD40 now. Only availbale in expensive spray cans overhere, but it convenient, and on the natural Washita and Arkansas stones I only need a tiny little spritz. So a little goes a long way. I also have some babyoil which is thicker. I am not quite sure what I like better. Make sure you get the baby oil without the fragrants! It is cheaper and doesn't smell so badly.

I have a manmade oilstone, something like an India. It works allright, but it really sucks oil like nothing! WD40 works, but needs to be replenished often. When I need to remove a lot I use this stone first, otherwise I start with the washita. I have kind of a love hate relationship with this stone. I also don't like how it tears a towel apart when cleaning the stone after use. But it works very well.

Kees,

Do you ever have a problem with the WD40 drying "gummy"?

WD40 feels a little heavier/thicker than Kerosene. Both seem to work very well, I've even tried mixing the two, a squirt of each on the stone and when flattening a back seems to keep the stone clean and cutting.

ken

[Graham Haydon]

Baby oil. Easy to pick up with your weekly shop and it's pretty safe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_oil#Toxicology . Other oils are classed as more harmful, users might not have issues with other options straight away but prolonged exposure can be an issue.

If you want old school you can still buy neatsfoot oil but for me it's three times the price of baby oil and the wood being worked wont notice what oil you use..

[Kees Heiden]

No Ken, no problem, but I always wipe the stone clean after use.

[James Nugnes]

Thanks folks

The straight kerosene and the baby oil were a bit of a surprise. The kerosene less so because it is so obvious to me that these honing oils are just too thick and my memory of honing oil from 50 years ago was that it was thinned down right out of the can.

Sorry about the confusion on the TOMZ Massager. Tom is the guy that first started using discarded portable Massager Machines with their slow rotational shafts as a basis for mounting discs and then something abrasive to the discs. I use his Corian discs as I like using the Work Sharp papers and mount them to the Corian. The papers wear quickly but are cheap enough. He does have diamond discs for it and everybody gets a leather strop disc for it. My application is about 75 different carving gouges and another 25 carving knives and the TOMZ is a good machine for that purpose. You can either just strop or sharpen and hone/strop depending on how you load the machine. The slow rotational characteristic allows you to watch the wire edge being formed though it would drive somebody trying to sharpen an ax or even a hatchet on it right up a wall.

But it does not work so well for repairing an edge and of course you have to have access to power to use it. For one thing I don't like anything automated when trying to repair a gouge or knife edge even slow rotational automated. I had been using contemporary Arkie slips for that purpose and more recently high quality double sided bench sized, diamond plates. Never got into water stones but understand why some find them optimal.

Diamond plates just seem to leave you in an odd place with regard to grit progression. There is just something about the feel of the edge against an oil stone that I just cannot get out of my fingers, palms and wrists from all those years ago sharpening against natural stone. Even the little slips feel better than anything else I sharpen against manually though they are just too small unless you really need the various shapes on a slip.

Anyway thanks again. Think I will try a mix of Kero and oil....probably even less than 50% oil.

[george wilson]

Professional shops that I have been in just use kerosene as a honing oil. In fact,they leave their India stones and slip stones in a large coffee can of kerosene.

A lot can be made of ANYTHING to do with sharpening. Too much,in fact. Pages and pages of all aspects of it.

I can tell you that for many years,to make all of the work I have posted here,I just used a can of "lock oil" for sharpening. It was available in the museum's large warehouse. So,I used it. Worked just fine. Lock oil is just a thinned out oil that will run into locks easily when a bit is squirted into the lock. The thin part evaporated after a while,leaving a thicker oil which would stay put on the surfaces where needed.

What would I recommend as an oil for oilstone users? Just plain old kerosene,not mixed with baby oil. All oil does is float the honed particles away from the cutting going on at the stone's surface. Thin oil like kerosene works the best. Any thickening will impede your sharpening as it starts to act like most other oils: a lubricant that is designed to keep surfaces from wearing out. Any thickness of it will make it harder to get your stone to cut due to being lubricated,which is what you DO NOT want. Don't make a big deal out of it.

What am I using now? I don't use oil at all. It is really best if you don't as it keeps oily fingers and tools off your pristine,perhaps soon to be varnished wood. I use a diamond stone to get rid of any nicks I can see quickly. I use water in a squirt bottle,with a few drops of dish detergent in it. We use Dawn in the kitchen,so that is what I use in the shop. After the diamond stone,I use a black Spyderco coarse ceramic stone(still a pretty fine stone by most measures!). Then,a white Spyderco ceramic stone. Recently I indulged myself with an "Ultra fine" Spyderco,but the others have served me for 30 years or so. I am yet to really try it,as I need to really use it for some hours to get the "tooth" off of it that comes from just being made at the factory. And,being a ceramic stone that will never wear appreciably,even that will take some good honing. My final edge is done by stropping on a piece of MDF with LEE VALLEY green chromium oxide buffing compound on it. You need to be careful,as there are green compounds out there that are not pure CrO,and will not cut as fine.

After trying just about every stone out there,including the mess of water stones,I have settled on these Spyderco stones. They don't absorb water,and just a spirt is needed,that is easily wiped off,and doesn't somehow rust your tools (those water stones DID!)

I had museum money to spend,and did do a lot of research on stones,but these are what I have settled on. My tools are plenty sharp to shave you(I did shave a guy during making our movie on harpsichord and violin making. He came in one morning unshaven. All I had was a straight razor I used to cut felt,leaving no fuzz,for harpsichord dampers. He was not cut.) Cutting felt with no fuzz left is a good test of a real sharp edge. Skiving suede leather down from chrome tanned sea ray skin is a challenging job,when you need that ray skin as thin as toilet paper. They used it to cover expensive little instrument cases in the 18th. C..,but they did not have the obnoxious chrome tanned stuff to attempt to skive. It's all I could find these days. It's like planing fuzz down!

[Jim Koepke]

My honing oil is plain mineral oil from the local grocer. The local feed stores carry gallon bottles but the pint bottle works out costing less. If it needed to be thinned, some mineral spirits or kerosene could be mixed in.

It works for me.

jtk

[James Nugnes]

I am somewhat amazed at how thick these commercial oils are...even the Norton. Norton has really been in this business as long as or longer than anybody especially when you consider that they acquired Pike. Though it is clear that for whatever reason Norton went heavy after the whole water stone thing. Must have convinced themselves that was the future.... Heck they still own mines, some of them here in NH that are chock full of natural oil stone that they could easily quarry and sell and they just don't have any interest.

I still have some Norton oil...more than I need....will just mix it at a small percentage with the Kerosene if for no other reason than I can experiment a bit looking for a happy medium in oil : kero. But the more I think about it and read here, even 50% of contemporary oil sounds heavy to me, wayyyyy heavy. 20% might be about all that can be mixed to any advantage over just straight kero if trying to use one mix over a broad range of oil stones. At some point, as suggested by the poster above maybe there is no advantage at all over just straight kero even over a broad range of oil stones.

[george wilson]

All heavier oil does is "push" your cutting edge away from the stone. Use Kerosene for best honing.

When a plain bearing in a lathe spindle gets going,a film of oil will surround the spindle,and it is strong enough to allow the CONSIDERABLE pressure of turning steel without allowing the spindle to touch the bearing and wear it out. That is a LOT of pressure. Your connecting rods in your car operate the same way. Well oiled and using proper oil before each use,there are plenty of lathes 40+ years old that are still in good condition. Not oiled,they will not last long at all.

Being the toolmaker in the museum,I was called down to the maintenance dept. motor shop. They had a 1940s South Bend lathe that mysteriously would not cut steel. It was one of those older South Bends that had no separate(and replaceable) bearings. The bearings were bored right out of the solid cast iron of the headstock. The lathe looked o.k.. They kept it clean,and it was well painted. But,when I put a crow bar under he chuck,pivoted on a block of wood,it would lift up the spindle over 1/8" !! That lathe would have had to have the headstock accurately line bored out to a larger diameter,and bronze bearings made and installed. That is,if the spindle's rotating surfaces had not been worn out,too. And,the cocked over gears in the headstock worn out. Only a competent machinist could have repaired it. They gave it or sold it to someone who wanted to use it for a spinning lathe. I would have had news for him thought!!!

I couldn't figure out why those guys couldn't find this simple fault. No one ever had the sense or caring to oil their machinery. I think I was the only one who ever oiled the machines in our backup shop. And,when I became toolmaker years later,I saw to it that things were properly maintained: oiled,blades changed,etc..

[James Nugnes]

Just unbelievable......if those that had passed on lets say ten years ago....so, close enough to know about the internet and technology generally and have some expectations for it could see how hard it has become TO DO JUST ANYTHING these days, they would likely be laughing themselves silly.

Home Depot's web site says it has 1-K Kero in stock at the stores local to me.....NOPE...all they have is the 1-K Kero substitute. God please take me before I am confronted with even one more substitute product in this lifetime. The web site does not even mention that the substitute is all they have....you would not even think the substitute exists it is so invisible.

This after calling three different McDonalds to see if they were "participating restaurants" for this Nintendo 3DS promotion that my kid wanted to load into his game system.

And of course that was a challenge all its own. Internet had phone numbers for all three local restaurants....all of them wrong by at least one digit in each case. So some numskull that works for the local franchisee tasked with loading that material to their website and keeping it current got it wrong THREE DIFFERENT TIMES!

Tried Verizon information and they have now gone to an effort to have a totally automated number information system. So the system has to recognize the name you are giving it before it will budge and make any effort to find it for you. Had to get a live person on the phone to make any headway at all just to call ACTIVE BUSINESSES. Then when I got to somebody on the phone at those actual locations, in two cases, they had no idea whether they were participating or not.

I swear to God it is just no wonder at all why this country is going right down the drain and this time our business "leaders" are as much at fault as the politicians. These guys would not know how to run a business if their lives depended on it. They have no idea how to evaluate risk/reward and how to make value judgements that work. They simply take the cheapest way out of everything, they install technologies they don't understand and worse for which their staunchest proponents also do not understand as it relates to practical application. The plan if there is one appears to be, find some way to deal with the nuclear fallout when it all goes to hell in a hand basket. I have never been so GD disappointed in our business leaders in my entire lifetime and not only because they pushed so many people out the door that actually knew how to grow and run businesses six or seven years ago based on the idea that business was not going to be good for awhile anyway...So why hang onto the people that actually know how to run these businesses, since they are not going to grow anyway. Much much too costly to keep people around that actually know something in a down economy. There is a heck of positive business perspective for you.

The result....I fully expect more than just postal employees to start going postal at some point because there are whole days now when you can do nothing but chase your tail if you are making any effort to be productive as you are literally road blocked at every turn. You go from one screwed up information system to the next, one crummy automated accounting system to the next...one botched up web site to the next, one technologically superior but functionally inferior [to its predecessor] piece of hardware to the next. The only way to avoid it apparently is to sit home on your fat lazy duff and do nothing. Nice job America....well done. I can only wish to climb into my grave sooner rather than later so I can start turning in it.

[Mel Fulks]

I'm sure George is right...But WD 40 smell is tolerated better by wives , so you have better chance of getting by honing at kitchen table.

[Tom M King]

Kerosene is still sold in separate pumps at stores around here, but it's a couple of bucks more expensive than diesel fuel even without road tax on it, and I can't take the smell either.

[James Nugnes]

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.