Thread: To wet or not to wet.

Looked at some photomicrographs online that showed magnified views of various abrasive stones and sheets. It was truly revealing as to why the eschar stone is so respected - tremendous uniformity of grit size. What did surprise me was the difference in the smoothness of the edge produced with the same stone, first wet and then dry. You would think the wet stone would produce a smoother edge, but not so. The dry stone produces a MUCH smoother edge with way less scratches at 200X magnification.
My question is this. The manufacturers of stones recommend soaking and wetting the stone prior to use, but what are the consequences of not doing that and instead using the stone dry to hone the razor?
Thanks for all the help,
Don

The following words are from the knives.com site and are not my words, but I do love the part about the Juranich shaving his beard with an AXE !

John Juranich caused quite a stir when he announced some years ago that as a result of testing he believed that both water and oil stones gave a better edge when used dry. Amazing as this might at first appear his claims are not without some foundation. He tested oilstone and drystone techniques in a meatpacking plant. The study was blind as he was relying on the opinions of the meat cutters themselves who had no idea how any individual knife was sharpened. He explains the events in his book The Razor Edge Book of Sharpening which makes very interesting reading.
Juranich believes that the slurry produced by mixing oil and metal and abrasive particles acted like a grinding paste. He says the effect of having this slurry pass over the edge acted like the earth on a plow tip, rounding it off. On examination under electron microscope the oil sharpened edges were chipped.(F1)
He added emphasis to his point by shaving his generous beard on television, with an axe that he sharpened in a matter of minutes, using the dry sharpening method. Since Juranich's revelations the practise of drystone sharpening has grown in popularity

I've wondered about this myself. It might be worth testing with razors.

Then again, an even better method might be to use running water?

Honing dry on a waterstone or oilstone sounds like a good way to load one up with some very hard to remove metal.

I've seen industrial grinders load up so badly, when the coolant/lubricant feeds stopped-up by accident, that the abrasive wheels were tossed as being un-recoverable.

I think the advantage of using water or oil is that is more capable of moving much more metal without clogging the stone. Having said that the dry method may have greater effect if used in the last stages of polishing. Maybe the running water as mentioned above would be the best of both worlds?
Mike

I just can't bring myself to hone dry. Even on a barber hone. What Steven said about the stone loading up is a fact. One of the reasons to use a liquid is that it is a vehicle to move the metal particles rather then grinding them into the stone. At least that is my uneducated guess.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

I just can't bring myself to hone dry. Even on a barber hone. What Steven said about the stone loading up is a fact. One of the reasons to use a liquid is that it is a vehicle to move the metal particles rather then grinding them into the stone. At least that is my uneducated guess.

+1 and the fact the oil/water acts as a lubricant.

What about on nonporous stones? I'd imagine that a stone like a swaty is harder than the particles removed from an edge of a razor. I don't think it would be easy to keep water on it without the use of soap or lather, either. Especially with the pressures and angles involved. But I do think that you would have to have a smoother honing surface to get the desired results because there is no cushion there from any lubricant. I do think that material could get in scratch lines left from lapping and collect to form a dry slurry that might cause some problems. Well, not problems, just the results you would expect from a slurry on small portions of the edge.