Thread: Start to Finish With Oil Stones?

Originally Posted by eKretz

In my experience, once Arks are very smooth they do not do much cutting with water - it's more of a burnishing effect. With oil they will still pull swarf. The stones don't really "clog" when using oil, they just get so much swarf on the surface that your razor or whatever you're sharpening is just sliding over oily steel/swarf rather than hitting abrasive. Easy remedy for this - add a few more drops of oil and wipe off the surface with a paper towel. Do it again until it comes away almost clean, then go back to honing. If you do this every 100 laps or so the stone will never clog, and even if you do get it loaded up, more oil and a paper towel wipe or two will clear it right out. Personally I never let anything BUT oil touch my Arks.

Originally Posted by Kees

I don't know what oil you would recommend, I only used Smith's honing oil that I bought with the stone. Every so often I would brush them under a hot water tap with washing up liquid to get rid of the oil and swarf clogging up the pores of the stone.

I sharpen my tools to great effect with 3 in 1 oil. It's just general purpose lubricant oil, nothing special.

Originally Posted by eKretz

In my experience, once Arks are very smooth they do not do much cutting with water - it's more of a burnishing effect. With oil they will still pull swarf. The stones don't really "clog" when using oil, they just get so much swarf on the surface that your razor or whatever you're sharpening is just sliding over oily steel/swarf rather than hitting abrasive. Easy remedy for this - add a few more drops of oil and wipe off the surface with a paper towel. Do it again until it comes away almost clean, then go back to honing. If you do this every 100 laps or so the stone will never clog, and even if you do get it loaded up, more oil and a paper towel wipe or two will clear it right out. Personally I never let anything BUT oil touch my Arks.

I second this. When I have my bevel totally flat against the stone, eventually it will begin to float over the surface, making no noise or tactile feedback. At this point, I use a lint free cloth and a bit of mineral spirits to clean it.

Mineral spirits will clean it in a jiffy and doesn't need to be fully rinsed before adding more oil, because it is oil (volatile oil).

Originally Posted by Kees

I don't know what oil you would recommend, I only used Smith's honing oil that I bought with the stone. Every so often I would brush them under a hot water tap with washing up liquid to get rid of the oil and swarf clogging up the pores of the stone.

I don't know what smiths is, but I've seen a lot of people using arkansas stones fairly dry. They need to have enough oil on them to actually float out particles. I use light mineral oil.

There's a million ways to use them. I've talked to someone who refuses to use anything but spit, because he thinks he's re-enacting something historical and saving money.

If it feels like the razor gets suspended above the stone in heavy oil, you can just use additional pressure.