Diamond/stone cleaner

hiwa

hiwa

Joined
Jun 7, 2009
Messages
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After washing my hands with pumice hand cleaner ( Gojo), I tried it on my stones and discovered it does a great job of cleaning them. Just put a bunch on and rub it around with your fingers or a brush. Works great! Try it!
 
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Yep, bar keepers friend works great too. I love GoJo stuff is great.
 
That sounds like a good idea. I've seen other posts here on BF about using mechanic's hand cleaner (similar stuff, but without the pumice) to clean a strop, so it makes sense that the GoJo could work on stones. And the extra scrubbing power of the pumice certainly sounds like a plus.

Somewhere around here, I've got a Jumbo size container that I bought at Costco a while back. I'll have to give it a try...
 
Don't scrub too hard with BKF. It's abrasive enough that it removes metal and might take your diamonds out of the plate.

If you don't believe me, sprinkle some on the bottom of your diamond plate, get a paper towel, and then scrub. You'll see metal come off.
 
I use BreakFree on my DMT hones every couple of months or so. It lifts off the embedded microscopic scarf particles, and restores the cutting effectiveness.
 
THG said:
Don't scrub too hard with BKF. It's abrasive enough that it removes metal and might take your diamonds out of the plate.

If you don't believe me, sprinkle some on the bottom of your diamond plate, get a paper towel, and then scrub. You'll see metal come off.
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Please tell me what BKF is .
 
BKF= barkeepers friend

Its a cleaner that uses a chemical reaction to clean.

THG, I've used BKF on my DMT hones weekly for over a year with no ill effect, have you damaged a stone?
 
knifenut1013 said:
THG, I've used BKF on my DMT hones weekly for over a year with no ill effect, have you damaged a stone?
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I don't think I've damaged a stone. I might have, but I don't think so. The "inside" area of the plate might be a bit less aggressive in cutting than the outer regions, but that could be that it's more broken-in.

Maybe you remember the thread I made about this subject. Try it: put some BKF on the back of your plate and scrub at it. Metal will come off. I don't know what it will do or if it has done anything to the diamond side of my plates, but I'm not going to continue with using BKF. On occasion, I do very lightly scrub with BKF, but not like I used to.
 
I use a tea spoon's worth, add enough water to make it into a paste, and then spread it around with my fingers with minimal scrubbing. I let it sit for about 30 seconds before rinsing it off, if the stone is fairly dirty the paste will turn grey but so far has not damaged my hones. I use my EEF hone the most so it sees the most cleanings, so far so good I guess.

I'll try it on the back of the stone tomorrow though.
 
THG said:
Don't scrub too hard with BKF. It's abrasive enough that it removes metal and might take your diamonds out of the plate.

If you don't believe me, sprinkle some on the bottom of your diamond plate, get a paper towel, and then scrub. You'll see metal come off.
Click to expand...

It does remove metal, that's the oxalic acid at work. I've noticed, when wiping the residual white 'dust' off of the top of the can (aluminum, I think), that metal is removed from the top (leaves dark residue on paper towel).

I think the key is to make sure you use water with BKF. Per the maker's web site, they recommend that the surface is wet before applying BKF, I assume to dilute it a bit (see the 5th 'bullet point' in their list of cleaning tips at the link below):

http://www.barkeepersfriend.com/cleaning.html
 
Barkeeper's Friend uses both chemical and abrasive action.
 
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