Ed Minch wrote: "The Berea oil stone I showed a couple of days ago says ?for use
with oil or water?.  I have never used water on a stone.  What happens?  IS
there too much swarf for oil to get rid of??


I avoid oil because I worry about getting oil residues on my work. Also, some
oils can settle into the pores of a stone and dry there, clogging it. Not just
drying oils, I had it happen with vegetable oil*. Water on natural Western
stones may allow the stone to cut sharper and quicker; in other words the oil
lubricates the stone and reduces friction, therefore reduces the cutting action.
On the other hand, oil seems to float swarf off the surface more efficiently. I
think that the finer the stone, the greater the drawbacks of using oil; but
then, I was taught to use a translucent black arkansas completely dry, and clean
it after each use with trichloroethane, so it feels natural to me to have little
or nothing between the steel and a fine stone.
Tom Conroy
*Vegetable oil. When I was in college, I visited a friend's family one vacation,
and they had just bought a nice hard white arkansas stone for use in the
kitchen. I knew a bit about sharpening, not enough, so I sharpened their kitchen
knives for them, using salad oil since they didn't have any light machine oil,
and thought no more of it. I visited again three or four years later (they lived
2500 miles from me) and found that poor stone covered with a layer of filthy
gunk half a millimeter thick; they had continued to use the stone as I had, with
vegetable oil, and they hadn't cleaned it thoroughly after each use. I managed
to scrape away most of the gunk, but not really enough; they didn't have any
solvents in the house, and I didn't know about boiling stones in detergent for
many years after that. I still feel guilty about that stone, though its probably
forty-six years ago and I think---I just realized, but I think I'm the only
person left alive who slept in that house that week. My friend Sally died a few
years ago, her parents before her, her grandmother and little brother long, long
ago. Last I heard Sally's sisters were still alive, but I don't think they were
in the house that vacation. Lift a glass. Lift a glass.