Thread: Using Oil on Waterstones: a simple question

Originally Posted by linguist

no need to discuss. buy two coticules. use the first one with water and the second one with oil.

That there is a great answer to the question. An excuse for more toys!! doubt it would fly with the wife tho.

Great video Krodor Thanks for making it!

What I don't understand is why your bout got discolored and your stone didn't? Did you ever get the stain out of the bout with soap and water?

Anyway...

It turns out the University that my wife teaches at has a geology dept lol!! Who knew? Being it's summer, I am not sure who's in and who's not, but I am going to try and make an appointment with a prof in the dept and see what I can learn. Moreover, I have a coti that I am willing to use in the name of science.

If the prof is willing to go on camera, I'll pursue the issue as no one will believe my second hand reciting of the information. Krodor - as you have done some work on the issue - what would you ask the prof and what would you do to the stone to compliment or disprove your experiment?

Wow...ummm...DMT it a bunch to get nice and flat and through any surface stuff. Maybe try a spot with smiths honing solution, a spot with mineral oil, and a spot with real honing oil.

Let them all sit on the coti in diff't places for 24 hrs (you see the spots spread quite a bit, so might need a big coti or a way to put down smaller drips of oil), ensuring you leave room for a control (nothing). Ensure you have a way to know where the drips are.

Without washing the surface with soap, rinse the hone off with fast moving water while giving it about 3 passes across the DMT again. If it soaked in, surely it soaked in more than that.

Get the guy /gal to run a surface analysis of each (maybe top 500 nm?) looking for -CHx- groups. Compare to the control. Might as well stick it in a 'scope too.

In each spot, run a depth profile on each, again looking for hydrocarbons. I work in an environment where we talk about material profiles on an angstrom or nanometer resolution...waaaaay too resolved for this. I bet they have some fancy sputter methods or something to check on resolutions of a half-micron or more. I'd like to see a depth profile down to 50 microns or so, unless it's clear that the signal is gone before then. Maybe more like 100 microns? Given most of us don't remove a mm of coti every 10 lappings, that should be enough, yes?

Another possibility is after the 24 hr soak, rinse and dont DMT, then use his/her equipment to measure the water contact angle (it's easy and cheap and fun to use that tool, maybe you can do it yourself). Rinse and DMT it 1 "standard" stroke. Measure the angles. Repeat until all contact angles equal the control.

When done, publish your results in Geology Today or whatever they have as a general readership journal I'd love to get the profs involved. Get to your materials engineering prof and build on whats been done looking at what a strop does. Really truly investigate the exact edge of a blade to provide quantifies characteristics of it so we can say for certain what makes a coti edge diff't from a surgical ark edge vs Escher edge vs regular thuringan edge, etc. get them to develop a quick, non-contact method to analyze your edge so that we can take subjectivity out if it. Really check the metallic structure of a TI vs. a Zowada vs. a gold dollar vs. a Buckingham. Lots of ideas, I'd love to be a professor and do all that. I've had thoughts trying to get a laser pointer working for us, wondering if we can use it to our advantage for something like this kind of edge analysis. So many oppys for engineering solutions for our hobby's "mystique".

Maybe I'll ask the prof to read all that lol... I couldn't recite that if I tried lol.

I am sure the publishing aspect will jump right out though. : )

I'll be on campus here next week - we will see! Here is to hoping we find a prof with a bit of time!

@Krodor, many thanks for actually taking the time to do the testing, seems any more that is just an alien concept..
People seem to only want to argue the point and never want to take the time to test it..

edit: The Coti that you used in the test, is this the Coticule that had already been used with oil in the past, I just re-read the posts ????


@Earcutter David I look forward to what you find also, that is taking it to a whole new level

Hey isn't FiReSTaRT all about minerals lol?? He might know something?

Originally Posted by gssixgun

@Krodor, many thanks for actually taking the time to do the testing, seems any more that is just an alien concept..
People seem to only want to argue the point and never want to take the time to test it..

My pleasure. I like playing with toys.

edit: The Coti that you used in the test, is this the Coticule that had already been used with oil in the past, I just re-read the posts ????

Great insight and question...yes, it is the same coti. Certainly brings into question "What if the earlier usage of honing with oil has goobered up the surface? You may not be able to tell the drip response due to residuals from that previous work." I can't argue against it. The standard answer from grant-seekers: "More work will be needed to fully understand the large spectrum of the issue blah blah blah..." On the other hand, the water sure didn't seem to care, and the rock slurries up like it did before the initial oil use.

I think another check I could try is to simply hone a razor on it again and see if I feel anything weird as the blade passes over the spots....haven't done that yet, but it won't be long before curiosity will get me... Then again, if the whole surface has potential oil-residues fully covering it anyway, I shouldn't feel the spots.

Science can always get more and more detailed, but finding when is "good enough" is when the engineer takes over. I must admit, I'm currently on the science side right now (evidenced in the above post), but maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and go the other way.

Have a nice rest of the Sunday, folks!

Originally Posted by Krodor

My pleasure. I like playing with toys.



Great insight and question...yes, it is the same coti. Certainly brings into question "What if the earlier usage of honing with oil has goobered up the surface? You may not be able to tell the drip response due to residuals from that previous work." I can't argue against it. The standard answer from grant-seekers: "More work will be needed to fully understand the large spectrum of the issue blah blah blah..." On the other hand, the water sure didn't seem to care, and the rock slurries up like it did before the initial oil use.

I think another check I could try is to simply hone a razor on it again and see if I feel anything weird as the blade passes over the spots....haven't done that yet, but it won't be long before curiosity will get me... Then again, if the whole surface has potential oil-residues fully covering it anyway, I shouldn't feel the spots.

Science can always get more and more detailed, but finding when is "good enough" is when the engineer takes over. I must admit, I'm currently on the science side right now (evidenced in the above post), but maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and go the other way.

Have a nice rest of the Sunday, folks!

I agree there is a point of taking this all too far,,

My actual reason for asking was the difference between the results on the Stone vs the "Slurry stone" for you... The stone had previous oil did the Slurry Stone????


On another thought:

It is rather funny that this thread, and Krodor's tests have started quite a few other threads about people actually testing things, you would almost think that SRP leads the world of Straight Razors or something like that

A couple of disclaimers.. Only took one geology course and barely passed it, so my knowledge of minerals is highly suspect Work wise, I was either crunching the numbers, using a pick ax and operating transmitters/receivers for indirect methods. Also, didn't have experience with oil stones or using oil for anything other than mechanical lubrication, drilling, cooking and certain acts with the ladies

I have a good friend who's a geologist, he's actually been one for like 30 years and is now the geology lab instructor at the university i'm attending. I could ask him some questions about the porous nature of the Coticule, which is a metamorphic shiest i believe. Which i think is technically a "non-porous" rock. Impermeable to oil and water, which is why it's a useful stone to use as you don't have to do any soaking.

I doubt his field is whether light oil will affect a honing stones properties or not but if i get a chance i'll discuss it with him.