Thread: What are you working on?

Have you ever saved something for a long long time knowing that 'Someday' you'll need it only to toss it and then not long after tossing it you find you need it?

Well I'd taken pictures of Gasman's steel and just recently deleted the files as I 'Knew' I'd never need them. Oh well, I took a couple of quick shots of mine for you.

Every F. Dick steel I've ever refurbished came apart like this one?I'd loosened it a bit so that's why there's a gap in the first pic:







On a couple of the steels I did, I needed to use some leather scraps to keep the jaws of some vice-grips from marring the steel and a long screwdriver through the ring to provide some leverage.

A couple of the rings twisted before the threads let go but they are easy to straighten.

IF you decide to disassemble yours, you might want to see if you can get some Kroil Oil or another penetrating oil to go down the threads to make things easier.

Hope this has been of some help.

Off to clean up the oxidization on my steel--

Dang it Aaron! Aaron has been so excited about his surfboard sized Arkie that I had to go pull out the great big hone of my Dad's.


I played with it a while back but couldn't find anything out about it and didn't know enough about hones to know what to do with it. I had flattened it out with my Norton flattening stone on both sides and it made the top (hard side with the.embedded mineral) too rough.


So today I burnished it back to smooth again. The porous side was still good. Well of course now I have to play around with it to see what it will do...Dang it Aaron! Turns out I spent half the day and all evening playing with a large rock. See what you made me do Aaron...Dang it!
Seriously though I'm still trying to figure out what this stone is and how to use it. I know marginally more now than I did when I pulled it out the first time so I at least knew enough to burnish it back to smooth.



What it seems like to me is a finishing stone with a softer, more porous side and a hard, higher grit side with a mineral in it. I sprayed some WD-40 on the porous side and within about a minute it had soaked it all up. You could see it soaking it up. The mineral side never did soak it up to dry like the other side did. So I took out a razor that I had used recently that was honed up to 8K. I played around with both sides some and they both will remove the stria from the 8K stone. As you may have read earlier I'm still trying to relearn honing from the bottom up so I'm still a little bit in the wilderness. Plus I haven't had HAD... Until now... Dang it Aaron!

Thats a big cbunk of rock too.

Roy, i dont have the pics either but i will say i use the one you fixed up for me on the Henkels in the kitchen often. It just works! Its a beauty.

Originally Posted by Gasman

Thats a big cbunk of rock too.

Roy, i dont have the pics either but i will say i use the one you fixed up for me on the Henkels in the kitchen often. It just works! Its a beauty.

You're was the easiest I've ever done. As I told you I believe that the dark gunk on the shaft was actually really old rust preventive oil from the factory and it cleaned right up. Also there wasn't a single ding on the brass piece that protects your fingers. So I'm 99% sure it was NOS.

Oh yea it is a real beauty

Getting a good steel is on my list of things to do. I may have to farm this job out so I don’t wind up down another rabbit hole.

Rocks are a lot of fun Paul. Just wait until you start looking for them in the wilderness.

Originally Posted by Gasman

Thats a big cbunk of rock too.

Yeah it's like honing on a landing strip.

Originally Posted by RezDog

Rocks are a lot of fun Paul. Just wait until you start looking for them in the wilderness.

I can see it coming already.

Went over the steel with some 220. Lost the nice brown patina, but it was a necessary loss to get it working well. Still some pits, but the surface feels really smooth. The worst ones are at the tip. I tried it on a couple of kitchen knives and it definitely added a bit of keenness back, didn't feel any catching or roughness.







I really like this steel and will be using it often.

Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

Dang it Aaron...

I assumed you know I was joking about that but just making sure.

Originally Posted by JellyJar

Went over the steel with some 220. Lost the nice brown patina, but it was a necessary loss to get it working well. Still some pits, but the surface feels really smooth. The worst ones are at the tip. I tried it on a couple of kitchen knives and it definitely added a bit of keenness back, didn't feel any catching or roughness.

I really like this steel and will be using it often.

I'm glad to hear that it smoothed out, that patina will slowly return/unless you don't want it to and keep it polished.

A steel gives a knife the best 'Refresh' if the knife is held at the same angle it was sharpened at.

I sharpen knives at approximately 22 degs. My mentor used a lower angle but I could never get good results so I stuck to the 22 degs.