sharpening stones - oil or water or what?

[Maurice Metzger]

Hi Jim,

India stones are aluminum oxide, carborundum stones are silicon carbide. Arkansas stones are novaculite, a natural stone. All of these are used with oil as a lubricant.

Water stones are usually aluminum oxide also. They wear much quicker than most oil stones but as they wear fresh abrasive is exposed.

There's more info here:

http://www.antiquetools.com/sharp/sharphistory.html

http://www.knifecenter.com/knifecent.../instruct.html

http://www.norsewoodsmith.com/ww/oilstones/edges1.htm

http://www.norsewoodsmith.com/ww/oilstones/cleaning.htm

There's also a great post by Bob Smalser about using oilstones somewhere here but I can't find it right now.

HTH,
Maurice

[Jim Grill]

After some cleaning I was able to identify two of the stones as Norton combination stones. One says "India" and the other says "Crystolon". Both are two sided. One seems a bit finer grit than the other.

Another stone is only labeled "India" with no manufacturer and is even finer than the others. Perhaps after more cleaning I'll find that they are actually all the same.

[Jim Matthews]

Use Lamp Oil as an inexpensive cutting fluid, it's readily available and has no added solvents.

Heavy oils will form a barrier to getting the steel on the stone.
(Think engine lubrication - the metal parts "float" on a bearing layer of oil, to reduce wear.)

The nice thing about using oil stones (or oil on diamond plates) is the reduced mess compared to water stones.
The bonus is that there's no water around to rust your tools.

http://norsewoodsmith.com/content/oil-stones

[John Crawford]

While we are on the topic, aside from a diamond stone, what would you folks recommend for flattening a hard Arkansas stone? I'm trying to get one flat, but don't have a diamond stone. 220 sandpaper isn't making much progress!

[Malcolm Schweizer]

[QUOTE=Jim Matthews;2188651]Use Lamp Oil as an inexpensive cutting fluid, it's readily available and has no added solvents./QUOTE]

... And if the power ever goes out you can light 'em up and still see what you're doing. :-)

[Jim Matthews]

Handy, to have backup sources.

Did you know that if the power goes out - you've got 75 gallons of fresh drinkable water in your hot water tank?

[Jack Curtis]

Handy, to have backup sources.

Did you know that if the power goes out - you've got 75 gallons of fresh drinkable water in your hot water tank?

Well, yeah, depending on the size of your tank; but my plumbing doesn't require electricity.

[Jim Koepke]

Well, yeah, depending on the size of your tank; but my plumbing doesn't require electricity.

Mine does. We live in an area with electricity as our utility for everything. If the power goes out about the best we can do is make coffee on top of the wood stove.

They did some work around here recently and our electricity is now much more reliable.

jtk