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Thread: Honing Oil - applying it to a stone in the correct ammount

  1. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rafael Herrera View Post
    I use food grade mineral oil in a spraying bottle. I can pour a small stream or a full spray by controlling the force I apply to the plunger. My oilcan looks like the one in this picture. Made in Hong Kong in the 50s, no. 3, trade mark 555.

    Attachment 425219
    OOooooo, pretty! Very nice. And it works with mineral oil. Nice.

  2. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by Warren Mickley View Post
    The choice of oil depends a bit on how regularly you sharpen. Cheap mineral oil is a mixture of oils of various weights. It works all right if you use it daily. However, if you leave it for a period the lighter components evaporate, leaving a gummy scum. Honing oil is more highly refined, which is why it is more expensive. It has a much tighter range of viscosity so it does not get gummy on the stone if used irregularly.

    I used to use a mixture of motor oil and kerosene, which was cheap at the time. What I liked was the ability to adjust the viscosity simply by adding more of one component or the other. When I became a full time woodworker I found I was coughing in the evenings and I traced it to the kerosene, which is a pretty good irritant.

    WD40 is also an irritant and not something you want to breathe all the time. Might be all right for part time use. It also has a low viscosity so that it does not suspend the steel particles nearly as well as oil. One might as well use water.
    Very interesting. I was specifically not aware of the difference between the cheap; and the expensive mineral oil. I bought a gallon of food grade mineral oil and I have an India stone soaking in it. I used it to sharpen an Axe blade and then I just dropped the stone into a zip lock bag. So I guess it is not really soaking, but, close enough I suppose. Should I worry about that?

  3. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by steven c newman View Post
    Hey...just another typical "Sharpening" thread around here....

    Might even be some Caveman come along, and saying he just pees on his stones....

    just a bead of 3in1 right down the center of the stone....let the edge spread it out....refresh as needed....K.I.S.S........

    So much "Complicate the simple, simplify the momentous....you'd think some were running for Congress"
    For sure I do not urinate on my stones...... when the wife is around

    I usually spread the oil with my finger to coat the top.

  4. #34
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    I've used 3 in 1, 10w30, and power steering fluid. Of these, the power steering fluid works best. Its cheap, low viscosity, and a quart lasts forever.

  5. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by Marinus Loewensteijn View Post
    Oil is a lubricant and this will minimize the effectiveness of grinding. When using a natural stone then water is a better option if it is new and has not been oiled before.
    Unless one wants to minimize the effectiveness of grinding. Not trying to be glib- Just the other day I watched a guy sharpen a knife on both sides of his soft Arkansas, treating each side as producing different results. The clean less used side was more aggressive than the more used and more oiled side.

  6. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by ken hatch View Post
    I'm setting in a dark box with nothing to do for four hours, so I have plenty of time to reply to threads that interest me. For some sick reason I find this one interesting.

    Marinus,

    I have a question, do you grind on natural stones? Or just hone and polish.

    ken
    I've had it all, Shapton waterstones, Arkansas stones, Norton India and waterstones, Vertitas MkI and MkII guides, Eclipse guide, Stanley guides, bench grinders.

    Reduced it and only use an old Taiwanese Tormek clone with a 10" natural stone and then I either hone with an Eclipse guide or the patented Stanley guide (that goes in the slot of a plane blade) for a micro bevel on a 1000/4000 Norton water stone (on the 4000 side) or freehand for chisels and skew blades (no micro bevel) on a 5000 Shapton waterstone. I do not bother with stropping.

  7. #37
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    Here's to a speedy and uneventful recovery.

    Slàinte Mhath

  8. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by Andrew Pitonyak View Post
    My reason for starting this thread is because sometimes I sharpen at work using some Arkansas stones that I have there. So, when a meeting is running, I might be listening to the phone while mindlessly fixing up some pocket knife blade. Note that I have pocket knives to refurbish. So there I am, sitting at my desk, and I grab that bottle of "Premium Honing Oil" and I mean to just drop a bit onto the stone, since I do not want a bunch flowing all over my desk, and I get way too much coming out of the bottle.

    The other points are interesting to me, but I originally asked because I wanted to control the amount. Oh, and I won't be using WD-40 in my office any time soon. Well, if I really had a need for it, perhaps. I did refinish a wood bookshelf in my office since I could not just take it home. I am just a peon, so was told that I had to use the ugly metal furniture. They said I could have this beautiful wooden shelf because it was broken and needed to be refinished. It is old... So I built some bits at home to bring in, and I made it work. Then, I rubbed it with Tung oil and steel wool. Next thing you know I had this beautiful book case in my office. And I am rambling....
    Keep a 1x3 inch stone in your pocket and just spit on it for pocket knives and such. The people I learned from and I did that all the time. Works great for utility knife blades as well. I think one of those little stones is in my tool kit. I have a DMT one in a leather pocket case too.

  9. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Matthews View Post
    Here's to a speedy and uneventful recovery.

    Slàinte Mhath
    Jim,

    Like a moth to a flame.

    ken

  10. #40
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    Neatsfoot oil -- nice and viscous and stays atop the stone. A few drops on the stone spreads and will still be sitting there at the end of the day. When honing you move the puddle back and forth over the stone never letting it go over the edge. Obviously not a petrochemical. It will however be too viscous in a cold shop for some tastes, but you need a warm shop for other reasons. A quart will last years. It doesn't take much.

    Besides evening out wear on the stone, honing in a figure eight keeps the oil on top of the stone (try it!). If you're constantly squirting and flooding the stone with some low viscosity fluid your process is missing the mark to some degree. You shouldn't need a dedicated sharpening station in order to corral a mess.

    In my rebellious youth I tried everything. The old timers who trained me knew what they were talking about though.
    Last edited by Charles Guest; 02-05-2020 at 3:36 AM.

  11. #41
    Quote Originally Posted by Charles Guest View Post
    Neatsfoot oil -- nice and viscous and stays atop the stone. A few drops on the stone spreads and will still be sitting there at the end of the day. When honing you move the puddle back and forth over the stone never letting it go over the edge. Obviously not a petrochemical. It will however be too viscous in a cold shop for some tastes, but you need a warm shop for other reasons. A quart will last years. It doesn't take much.

    Besides evening out wear on the stone, honing in a figure eight keeps the oil on top of the stone. If you're constantly squirting and flooding the stone with some low viscosity fluid your process is missing the mark to some degree. You shouldn't need a dedicated sharpening station partly in order to corral a mess.
    Charles,

    I thought I was the only one still using Neatsfoot oil. Good on you.

    ken

  12. #42
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    I trained under a guy who said that a drop of oil should never touch the case much less the bench or whatever the cased stone was sitting on. I'm not that severe, but he was basically right. Nothing beats neatsfoot oil for holding swarf in suspense.

  13. #43
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    It will however be too viscous in a cold shop for some tastes, but you need a warm shop for other reasons.
    A warm shop is nice. Yesterday after a couple of hours with my heater running it got up to a toasty 38ºF/3.3ºC:

    Mallet Mortise.jpg

    Sometimes when doing a lot of planing or other activity the coat comes off.

    This is my main reason for using oilstones in the winter. The water gets rather difficult to use when it is frozen.

    jtk
    Last edited by Jim Koepke; 02-05-2020 at 10:41 AM. Reason: This is my main reason
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  14. #44
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    If you'd like to be obsessive about it, SigmaAldrich will sell you mineral oil in your choice of 39 different viscosities to play with.

    https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog...g=en&region=US

  15. #45
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    Charles, Ken, if the honing oil should be viscous enough not to flow out of the top of the stone, then wouldn't 3-in-1 or motor oil do the trick? I thought it was desirable to use a thin oil, or this just a different approach?

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