Thread: ARKS IN THE WILD

Arks in the Wild

This weekend I found these 2 Arks at an Antique Flea Market, an 8x2 labeled Pike Washita, and a 6x2 labeled and boxed Pike Lilly White, $15 for the pair. They are out there.

I soaked them both in hot water for about 15 minutes and carefully eased off the side labeled with a single edge razor blade and transferred the labels to a sheet of plastic to dry. I may re attach them after the stones are cleaned and seal them.

I soaked in screaming hot water, sprayed with Oven Cleaner and gave a couple of trips in the Ultrasound with Simple Green to remove most of the grime. (note how white the Lilly White is under the label in the second to last photo.

Photos 8-10 are after 2 days of soaking in Awesome and water, still soaking. For you eagle eyes, yes in the tray with the Lilly White is a 5 inch Translucent I picked up 2 weeks ago for 2 bucks, boxed.

Great find I’m jealous!

Oh those are pretty.

I wont even say what i paid for mine.

nice. im just getting into stones and honestly i wouldnt even know what im looking at if i saw them at a flea market or antique store.

Very nice, great job cleaning them..

Nice grab, Marty.!

What a steal! They went to a good home.

Score!
Congrats Marty. I might have to go looking.

Recently I have stumbled across a few Arks, Washitas, and smaller translucents.

I have been experimenting with way to clean them quickly. I have always cleaned with Oven Cleaner and soaked in Simple Green or Awesome, sometimes for month. It works but is slow.

Today after the Oven cleaner and Simple Green in the Ultrasound most of the oil was removed. I put the Lilly White Washita and the other new purple streaked Washita in hot water and a liberal amount of Barkeeper’s Friend, about 4 -5 good shakes from the can, probably about 4 tablespoons, I filled a plastic shoe box with enough hot water to cover the stones, about an inch and a half.

After soaking about an hour, I remove the stones and rinsed in hot water and scrubbed with a stiff nylon brush, it removed a lot of oil that came to the surface. I put them back into the Barkeeper’s (Oxalic Acid) for another 2 -hour soak, I sprinkled some more Barkeepers and lapped it with a synthetic Silicone Carbide lapping/flattening stone, it worked very well in removing a lot of the staining, with Barkeepers slurry.

At last a good use for those stone, I do not use them for lapping synthetic stones as they are too messy, but they work fine with Barkeepers as a cleaner and I suppose they are doing some flattening, I will lap them flat with loose, Silicone Carbide later.

The Lilly White came out as clean as the part of the stone that was covered by the label. Photos 2 & 3 are of the edge where the label was, Photo 1 is the same edge, after removing the label.

The other Washita needed a bit more soaking and I added another Washita, I suspect is another Lilly White, picked up in my travels and had soaked for a week or so but all the staining was not removed and it had a brownish yellow hue. After an hour or so it was much whiter.

It had been soaking in Barkeepers for a few hours, about half a day at the time of the photo.

The translucent took on a dark hue, it was much whiter before the Barkeepers, though it does not smell of oil. I soaked it in Simple Green and put it through a few cycles of the Ultrasound, it looks a bit whiter. It is still soaking.

Oddly the barkeeper’s and the synthetic lapping stone did nothing to whiten the Translucent, but it works very well on the oily Washitas.

Great find !