Thread: Black Plague

I store my Norton 4/8k in weak bleach, and the 8k side darkened toward orange... but with no effect on the honing.

If the problem is mold, you could try soaking the stones overnight in water with a few ounces of hydrogen peroxide added. The peroxide should eat away the mold and any staining without harming the hones. If peroxide isn't to your liking, a good fallback might be OxyClean.

Originally Posted by RoyceH

If the problem is mold, you could try soaking the stones overnight in water with a few ounces of hydrogen peroxide added. The peroxide should eat away the mold and any staining without harming the hones. If peroxide isn't to your liking, a good fallback might be OxyClean.

If you look carefully at OxyClean's ingredients, it's basically hydrogen peroxide. They bought a company that made a pet mess eliminator enzyme I really liked, kept the old packaging, and used it as another excuse to sell hydrogen peroxide. But I digress. And have an unsightly bleach spot on the carpet.

Bleach won't harm the Norton. I kept it in a pretty strong solution for hours on a couple of occasions with no ill effects. Unless you're Lynn, Randy or Glen, you don't need to keep your hones submerged in water all the time. A 15min soak takes care of it when you do need to bust it out and do some constructive metal removal. Here's how the cleanup's done:

1) Rinse off whatever you can with water and maybe dish detergent (can't hurt, can help)
2) Give it a good scrubbing with scotch pad and some abrasive powder cleaner like Old Dutch
3) Rinse and let soak in a 1% bleach solution for at least an hour
4) Rinse WELL and let soak in clean water for 30-60min to get the worst of the bleach out
5) Let dry and store in a dry place. Any residual bleach will get dissolved into near nothingness with the next soaking