Thread: just spit on it

I've seen plenty of posts of water vs oil and even more about slurries yet i haven't seen a single post which mentions spit as the lubricant on a whetstone. I know it sounds childish but the thickness of clean saliva is a good medium for carrying off the waste metals on your hone. You can clearly see your spit change to a grayish color while on a hone yet, unlike oil, spit can easily be wiped off. Just curious because as a youth, i was taught to stay away from using water.

BTW natural Arkansas hones are what i'm accustom to using. the newer man made hones are a different beast all together.

that's what she said


sorry had to

Originally Posted by jsmiff

I've seen plenty of posts of water vs oil and even more about slurries yet i haven't seen a single post which mentions spit as the lubricant on a whetstone. I know it sounds childish but the thickness of clean saliva is a good medium for carrying off the waste metals on your hone. You can clearly see your spit change to a grayish color while on a hone yet, unlike oil, spit can easily be wiped off. Just curious because as a youth, i was taught to stay away from using water.

BTW natural Arkansas hones are what i'm accustom to using. the newer man made hones are a different beast all together.

Good post! I also used spit when refining tools as a machinist, on Arkansas' and a Swaty.
~Richard

Fascinating first post.

After all the talk here about high level facial skin management, clean lintless towels and not filling and using the sink bowl 'cause someone maybe spit in it... well, mercy, I don't see this going well. I always preferred spit to oil on hardstones for smaller knives. Don't think I have enough spit to keep a big Norton wet, though. Might have to call in backup for an endless supply...

I can see it now...... Honing service: Bevel brought to perfection on a Chosera 1k , progression through 4/8/12k with a SPIT polish on a Zulu Grey. 45.00 ... No one else puts a spit polish on your edge like I do. Must be what I drink :<0)

I believe it was taught to spit on hones back when I didn't exist yet and then some more years back. A nice big phlegm on a small barber's hone while you're getting a shave, sounds good

Spit,,,,Really????

Wonders out of all the First Post topics that you could have chosen, how you came up with this one

First, Welcome to SRP hope you enjoy your time here

To explain and try and answer your question..

By a huge majority Waterstones are the predominant type used for Straight Razors, most of those especially in the lower stages are Synthetics and many of those require vast amounts of water to use in comparison to "Spittin" on them.

Even in the higher grit ranges most of us either use a spray bottle or a water "Well" to flush our stones as we hone, it really does take a bit of water...
Many of the Waterstones in question are quite soft when compared to an Arkie, and you need more water to flush away not only the Swarf but you want to expose the stone's fresh grit to use...
Slurries and the use of Slurry Stones/Nagura is a whole other topic but they also require more water then just spittn

There are a few here that use Oilstones, at the higher ranges, some use Honing oil some use something akin to "Smith's Honing Solution" that is water soluble so that no oil ever gets near our stupidly expensive Waterstone finishers..

So basically what Mister Moo mentioned above, quite humorously I might add, is actually true, we just can't spit that much to make it work on many of the rocks we use


I think however that almost all of us started out honing our first pocket knives that way, with a small Arkie, and spittin on it and grinding away...

I hope that answered your question

"Wonders out of all the First Post topics that you could have chosen, how you came up with this one" ...ahh just thought I would put the idea out there. while I understand you cant use spit on manmade stones, it does have its benefits on a hard stone. I've learned several methods of sharpening over the years, yet the one I thought was a basic, is never mentioned.

btw its more than just spiting on the stone, you have to know when to wipe it off.

So does it work better as a finisher if you have a sinus infection, bronchitis, or just ate a snickers bar? Sorry, I'm really hard to gross out, but that whole idea sounds pretty disgusting.