Thread: Honing with Salt Water

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience or insight they can share with regard to honing with salt water on natural stones. What I'm wondering is if the salt water might help to keep the stone clear from clogging and augment aggressiveness (or coarseness) of the honing surface relative to tap water. Also, whether or not salt water would augment the oxidation factor to the point where honing with it would be impractical.

I doubt it does anything positive for the process. If using salt water is not mentioned in the old books, then it must not be useful at all.

I would not do it. I live on the beach in Florida and assure you salt water is highly corrosive to steel. Up north where they use salt to melt snow it breaks down concrete and stone. I would be concerned of the effects on razor and hones.

I get worried about my hard tap water on my naturals. There's no way in hell salt is getting anywhere near them. What stone are you using that's having clogging issues?

Originally Posted by Brontosaurus

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience or insight they can share with regard to honing with salt water on natural stones. What I'm wondering is if the salt water might help to keep the stone clear from clogging and augment aggressiveness (or coarseness) of the honing surface relative to tap water. Also, whether or not salt water would augment the oxidation factor to the point where honing with it would be impractical.

I think it would only have any effect on clogging if the amount of salt was beyond saturation, so that you actually had salt crystals remaining in the water. I'm not sure that would be a good idea. Beyond that, as mentioned already, the salt would drastically increase corrosion of the edge. Bottom line, I don't think salt water would be a good idea.

Thank you for the replies. Maybe I've been reading too much Herman Melville, which has led me to wonder about a stone's versatility in moving from, say, ocean salt water to sperm oil when out at sea "back in the day." Corrosion of the edge would imply increased coarseness followed by oil's subsequent calming effect, no?

Salt - sodium chloride - is very bad for both carbon and stainless steels because chlorine/chlorides bond strongly with iron. IOW, the chlorine removes the iron from your steel. Chlorine, especially hydrochloric acid, can eat holes in stainless steel, rust every ferric thing in sight, and is just generally nasty to steel.

I do platinum photographic printing, and the platinum/palladium salts are initially bound to ferric oxide (basically rust). Once you've developed your print, the remaining ferric oxide must be removed, and a 1-2% hydrochloric acid does that almost immediately and must then be neutralized in a sequence of alkaline baths so the paper will last.

As a general rule, you must avoid all acids at all costs when dealing with razors, whose edges are so thin that they cannot stand any insult, shaving is bad enough.

There was a thread on another forum where a noob cleans his razors in soda pop (phosphoric acid). He left a nice vintage razor in and it turned black (iron phosphate) and ruined the razor.

I also polish knives with Japanese natural waterstones. I have seen tap water discolor fresh steel, and sword polishers in Japan frequently add a bit of bicarbonate of soda to the water to ensure that it does not discolor the steel.

NO ACIDS, NO CHLORINE! EVER! Keep your water alkaline.

Cheers, Steve

Actually even your slurry can be acidic. I measured the pH of the slurry off of two of my Japanese hones several years ago after lapping them and an Asagi had a pH of 6.78 (nearly neutral) and a Kiita that was 4.64 (significantly more acidic).

I use the Japanese sword polishers' method of adding a bit of baking soda to my honing water in a spray bottle. I have a couple of very hard, fine, and acidic hones. Razors honed on the could have mild fine rust by the time I was finished honing.
~Richard

Originally Posted by Brontosaurus

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience or insight they can share with regard to honing with salt water on natural stones. What I'm wondering is if the salt water might help to keep the stone clear from clogging and augment aggressiveness (or coarseness) of the honing surface relative to tap water. Also, whether or not salt water would augment the oxidation factor to the point where honing with it would be impractical.

Honing with salt might be manageable on the razor steel but not the hone.

As the hone dries the salt crystallizes and who knows that that does.
I have seen telephone polls feeding power to brine pumps at brine fields and
that would not be good for the hone.

It is interesting to ask. One of the tricks used by commercial edgemakers
is an electric current assisted etch to get that last bit out of the edge.

If you had a solution and clamp you might etch a slightly harsher edge out of the steel.