Thread: How do you (safely) remove stains to keep your Norton waterstone beautiful?

The appearance of stones is most often raised about high value Jnats and EU stones where labels/stamps are important to validate their true identity and maintain their resale or collector value.

I refresh my lapped synthetic water stones with a DMT before every use to refresh and clean their surface and keep them flat. That pristine look of new stones, like the look of most working hand tools, does not survive its 1st use.

New stones are not really as good as they appear because most NIB stones are not truely flat and their surfaces are not ready for honing razors. A freshly lapped ready-for-use surface on a stone which has performed well on my razors looks good to me.

After use, I clean my stones under running water, and may hit the surface with a nagura stone or DMT to clean up stains before final rinsing. After cleaning, I let them air dry in a safe place before putting them away.

Mildew will form on stones put damp into cardboard boxes. However, residual dampness is more of an issue for low grit porous course stones than high grit finishing stones which do not absorb or retain much water.

HTH