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Water water water
- Thread starter Zach4542
- Start date
No, because the water will evaporate, leaving no residue (unless your water has a lot of minerals in it). Once it is dry, you have the choice of using water, oil, or nothing at all. Once you use oil, the stone is contaminated with oil, which is difficult to remove every trace of.
Water isn't going to make your knife any sharper, it just keeps your stone from clogging up, if you use waterstones then water is a must. Just try it with water and see how you like it, if you don't like it you can always go back with dry sharpening. I prefer using water on my stones.
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Biggest drawback to water is increased risk of rust/corrosion, especially with steels like O1 which can rust right before your very eyes. IMO oil provides a much better "feel" when sharpening, but I guess that's a subjective thing.
However I can't see why using water on a stone that's been oiled before is going to create a problem; and BTW many (most?) of Norton India stones are pre-oiled anyway. It certainly shouldn't cause any problems if you decided to use oil in the future, or at least I've never found any.
However I can't see why using water on a stone that's been oiled before is going to create a problem; and BTW many (most?) of Norton India stones are pre-oiled anyway. It certainly shouldn't cause any problems if you decided to use oil in the future, or at least I've never found any.
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Using water on an oiled stone just doesn't work well. Most often it's because the steel particles, water, and oil turn into a gummy paste that loads the stone surface, and you can't just add oil or water to flush it off. If it's left like that without a thorough degreasing and cleaning it will glaze the stone surface, which is really just a pain the ass to deal with.
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DoW,
Adding baking soda to water reduces that rusting-before-your-eyes from happening.
Adding baking soda to water reduces that rusting-before-your-eyes from happening.
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Ah-ha! I should have known that a waterstone guru such as yourself would have knowledge of such things.
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I know nutting! Yuzuha told me.
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Bill is right. You can get water to evaporate entirely and then you have the equivalent of a virgin stone.
Oil does not evaporate. You cannot just switch to water after using oil. Until you remove 100% of the oil residue, wetting it with water will make a most unsatisfactory gunk. Removing 100% of the residue would be so difficult as to not be worth the effort. It would cost you more money for enough solvent to remove all the residue than it would to buy a new stone.
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Evaporation is just the molecules in the liquid separating from each other into the air. The molecules in oil are much larger and held together stronger, so it's going to be quite a bit longer, if ever.
Jason B.
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
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I like soapy water, it seems to reduced the rusting factor and breaks the surface tension seemingly to increase the feed back from the stone. Not sure how well it works on other stones but works excellent on diamond stones.
I do the same, but only on diamond stones so I, also, do not know how it'd work on other types of stone. Soap is better than dish detergent because dish detergent is more corrosive to metals. I keep an old bar of bath soap with my sharpening supplies and rub a little on the dry stone then apply some water with a spray bottle. The sharpening action mixes them together.
Bill
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Petroleum products that are commonly used as lubricants do not evaporate.
Kerosene will evaporate, but it is not commonly used as a lubricant.
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Here here!
Soap and baking soda are mildly alkaline, but dishwashing detergent can often contain chlorine bleach and that stuff treats steel like bacteria.
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Dry as a bone works best for me.
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I used to believe that was true, but not so sure anymore. For one thing I think many who are using water, or soap & water, Windex, etc. on stones are starting with stones that are oil-soaked from the manufacturer -- e.g. just about every bench stone Norton makes except the cheapies. Plus water (not talking soapy water here) and oil shouldn't react, except perhaps to create a milky-looking mixture, and the water should evaporate out afterwards. This leads me to think there's more going on.
Recalling my own limited experiences (and they are limited, because I'm fine with oil on AO and SiC stones, so no reason to use anything else) it seems it was with finer SiC stones that could have been gunked up from years of use, and probably having impure or unstable oils used on them before. IIRC these were stones for which there seemed to be no salvation, including solvents, high temps, other than that you could get some fair cutting action out of them again if you used a decent cutting or tapping fluid.
I'm wondering, too ... does anyone else find it puzzling that some report no problems with stones loading up, using them completely dry, while others of us have had nothing but grief when trying that? I have all but ruined medium SiC stones doing this in the past, as well as fine AO stones for which there's really no recovery. In fact I remember deciding that water was completely unsatisfactory for fine AO, which really only work well with kerosene or very light oil.
Anyway, I suspect there's a great deal more involved. When we say "stone" I've no doubt that you're going to see different results with AO vs. SiC stones, different results depending on grit, and then differences based on who manufactured the stone in the first place.
Perhaps all academic from my standpoint, but would be interesting to sort it out.
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Sorry, oilstones work best with oil. They always have. They are designed to behave that way. They are meant to be used with oil. You will get less fouling of the stone and faster results with oil. Yes, you will also get more mess.
If you want to use water, then get waterstones. They cut many times faster than oil stones anyway. I'm astounded people have the patience for oil stones. Waterstones are way quicker.
If you want to use water, then get waterstones. They cut many times faster than oil stones anyway. I'm astounded people have the patience for oil stones. Waterstones are way quicker.
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If you have access to a paved driveway or sidewalk, you can scrape new life into glazed AO and SiC stones.
Coarser grit oilstones tend to work better than coarser grit waterstones. A 100 grit Norton Crystolon will always outcut an 80 grit Naniwa Golden Lobster. A 180 grit Norton India will outlast a huge old 220 grit Immanshi pink brick waterstone. Of course, when you get into the range of 5,000-8,000 grit waterstones versus a hard, translucent Arkansas stone, the waterstones are lightyears better, but at that point, most of the hard work has already been done.