u/ApplesArePeopleToo

A family member brought round their two favourite knives for me to sharpen, a pair of sadly neglected Globals. They had apparently only been sharpened once before, and it showed. I think whatever cutting capacity they still had was powered by all the chips.

I reprofiled them freehand on a 220/600 Sharpal diamond plate, then on to a Shapton Kuromaku 1000, Kuromaku 2000, and finished on a 2.5 micron diamond strop.

I’ve had a double sided boron carbide 800/ruby 3000 stone from AliExpress for a few years now. I’ve always liked the ruby side, but I could never get along with the boron. It felt glazed and glassy from brand new, and I figured I was somehow using it wrong, given all the praise u/hahaha786567565687 and others had for it.

But tonight I lapped it on a 220 grit diamond plate, and now I get it. I don’t know if it had some sort of crust on it from manufacturing or what, but now it feels great!

I’m really starting to like hard stones, and this one fits the bill. It’s maybe not quite as fast as my Shapton Kuromaku 1000, perhaps (I’ll need to do a head to head to confirm that though), but it’s not slow, and I can tell it’s not going to need flattening for aaaaages.

I’m tempted to get one of the 400 grit boron bench stones for reprofiling the soft stainless knives I periodically get handed by family and neighbours.

From buying old oilstones, I’ve amassed a bunch of gunky old stone holder boxes. I’ve cleaned up the stones OK, but some of the boxes are quite nice and I’d like to keep them.

I’ve scrubbed one of the cleaner ones with Simple Green, but the dirtier ones would require a good soak, which wouldn’t be good for the wood.

Has anyone had any success cleaning all the old oil and swarf off old boxes without wrecking the wood?

What are the best stainless steels for knives on which natural whetstones still work well? Obviously we’re ruling out the usual supersteels, but do mid-range options with some carbides like VG10, AUS10, or 440C sharpen OK on naturals?

14C28N and AEB-L seem like good options, too - apparently they’re low carbide, but still good performers.

The photo’s just for illustration, but it’s a Damascus-clad VG10 blade I made a handle for. I’ve got a few VG10 knives, but I haven’t used them extensively on my natural stones yet. I mainly used my naturals on AUS8, cheap soft stainless, high carbon steel, and vintage HSS woodworking tools.

I took a visit yesterday to a local mineral and gem dealer. The place is absolute heaven for a rock and fossil nerd like me. I was there to find some Australian rocks that might work as whetstones.

What I came away with was a slice of ‘snakeskin jasper’ from the Pilbara in Western Australia, and a few different bits of zebrastone/astronomite/primordial stone(more on that later).

The jasper (top in the group photo) is a banded iron formation made of alternating seams of hematite, jaspilite, quartz, and chalcedony. It’s from a 2.5 billion year old formation. I saw ‘jasper’ and figured it would be some sort of microcrystalline quartz and might work. I haven’t tried it yet.

The zebrastone/astronomite/primordial stone is a banded siltstone from the Kimberly in Western Australia. It’s a fine-grained siliceous argillite made of quartz, sericite, and clay minerals like kaolinite, supposedly 60-70% silica.

The different names are marketing terms for the different patterns, which I believe occur in different aged layers of the deposits. The zebrastone is the one with big spots on the left of the group photo, and it’s about 670m years old. The astronomite is the spotty one on the right, geologically basically the same thing as zebrastone.

The ‘primordial stone’ is part of the same deposit, I think, but harder and about 1.2 billion years old. I chose to start with this one.

I roughly flattened the slab on a concrete path, then spent a bunch of time on it with a SiC flattening brick. It took a while, but it’s not a particularly hard stone, so it wasn’t too much work. It generated a purple-maroon slurry.

I tried it out with a soft stainless steel Victorinox paring knife. It made a small burr after a moderate number of passes. I’d call it about a medium speed cutter for a natural stone.

The grit is quite fine. My first guess would be somewhere in the 3000-5000 ballpark, but I’ll have to use it more to get a better feel for it. I haven’t used any other siltstones before, so unfortunately I can’t compare it to Jnats or anything.

So long story short, I’m pretty happy with how this experiment turned out. It’s a beautiful looking stone, and it actually works as a whetstone!

I snagged two naturals at an antique store this week, both with boxes, and just finished cleaning them up. I got overenthusiastic and forgot to take before photos, unfortunately.

One is a classic Washita. Unlabelled, but it looks very similar to my Norton Lily White, albeit a bit smaller. It’s quite dished on one side, so I lapped the other side flat.

The other is some kind of hard slate. It had a few gouges in it, despite ‘for razors only’ being engraved on the box. It generated a light brown slurry when I lapped it. And thoughts on what it is?

I had the perfect opportunity to put my new (to me) natural stones through their paces today. I’d asked my neighbour if she needed any of her knives sharpened, and she brought over the usual ‘non-knife person’ cheap stainless kitchen knives with a concave edge and less bite than a teaspoon.

But in addition, she brought over a collection of vintage French pocket knives given to her by an uncle - Laguioles and similar makes. All well and truly blunt, but in good old high carbon steel - just the thing for natural stones.

Pictured left to right, coarse to fine, all used with oil; Hindostan, Pike lily white Washita, Turkey stone, Norton hard Arkansas.

I was really pleasantly surprised by the Hindostan. I reckon it’s somewhere around 800 grit, cuts surprisingly fast, and leaves a nice toothy edge.

The Washita is great too, deserving of its reputation. It followed the Hindostan well. Somewhere around 1500-2000 grit, at a guess.

The Turkey stone was good too, but fairly similar to the Washita, perhaps a little finer. Very thirsty for oil.

The hard Ark did the hard Ark thing very nicely. It generated a burr with some pressure, and honed well with light strokes.

For anyone interested in the outcome of my last, less successful, batch of mystery stones, I’ve cleaned up the two that looked like naturals and lapped one of their faces with 120 grit SiC powder.

I’m still not sure what I’ve got. Apologies for the crummy photos, but any thoughts from the experts would be appreciated!

Welp, you win some, you lose some. I got enthusiastic after my first batch of mystery stones turned out to be a really nice Washita, hard Ark, slate and Turkey stone. I bought a batch of seven more old oilstones from someone on Ebay, with the usual ‘indeterminate dark grey rectangle’ style photos.

They just turned up. I’m now the proud owner of five silicon carbide bricks, one of them cracked in half.

The other two, however, look like naturals. I can’t tell what they are until I clean them up, but one feels like an Ark (fine texture, heavy, nice high tone when tapped), the other I’m not sure - possibly a hard slate?

An update on the four old oilstones I posted about the other day. I soaked the two worst in kerosene for two days, then in Simple Green for a few hours. The two better ones got two days in Simple Green.

The Norton HB8 black translucent Arkansas and the Salmen’s Yellow Lake slate (probably) came up really nicely, but they were in great condition to start with.

The two filthy ones I’d sorta resigned myself that they might be junk, particularly the dark one in the box. I figured it would turn out to be an India stone.

Well, I got lucky!

The suspected India stone turned out to have been glued into its wooden base with what looks like Liquid Nails. I had to break the base to get it off.

When I did, under the grime and glue, I spotted a label that read “Pike Lily White Washita”! Yeehaw!

As carefully as I could, I scraped the glue and gunk off with a razor blade (photos 2 and 3). I soaked it for a little bit in Simple Green, but I was worried about the label getting damaged, so I settled on just lapping the top and sides to clean it up. It still needs a bit more lapping, but you can see in the photos it turned out pretty nice, albeit nowhere near ‘lily white’ any more.

The other mystery stone has turned out to be a lovely-looking grey-green Turkey stone.

First photo left to right: Washita, Arkansas, slate, Turkey stone.

I wanted to try some natural stones, but didn’t want to spend Dans or jnats money. So to dip my toe in the water, I snagged this batch of old oilstones labelled as naturals from a chap on Facebook marketplace.

I only know what two of them are. On the far left is a Norton hard Arkansas in really good nick - I’m really happy with this one! Centre right next to its blue box is a Salmen’s UK-made stone, which after a bit of research I think is a Yellow Lake slate. Also in good nick and a bit of a win, I think.

The other two don’t have any labels to help me. The centre left pale one could be a light Turkish stone, a Washita, or something else. The one on the far right, I’m leaning towards a Turkish stone, as I’m in Australia and they were quite common here. But it’s so filthy it could be anything under all that grime. I can’t even get it out of its box, it’s so caked up with old oil and dirt.

I’m going to give them a good soak in Simple Green for a day or two to remove the gunk so I can get a good look at them. If nothing else, it should stop them smelling like some ancient diesel engine!

I’ve been chasing ‘paper towel slicing sharp’ with my freehand sharpening for a while now, and tonight I finally got there! Not as well as I’d like, but definitely getting some slicing action going on in paper towels, not just tearing.

I started with one of my favourite knives that was already shaving/paper slicing sharp; a Damascus-clad VG10 kiritsuke that I made my own handle for from macadamia wood.

Because it was already reasonably sharp, I started on a boron 800 grit, then moved through a Chinese ruby 3000, King 6000, Shapton Kuromaku 8000, 2.5 micron diamond strop (rough-side cow leather), then 1 micron diamond strop (smooth side kangaroo leather). Yes, I know that’s a real mish-mash of stones.

I think my main stumbling block is that I’ve been hand sharpening at too steep an angle. To get this knife cutting paper towel more cleanly, I probably need to reprofile it at a lower angle.