- Messages
- 109
- Location
- Edinburgh
Any ideas on leeching oil out of a stone or additional stone cleaning methods / tips
So I got this "Charnley" stone, which may or may not be a legit finisher, but I got it down to a single figure price which - for me - means it's worth finding out. If it's not, at least it should finish my chisels nicely (or keep a pile of papers in place with the window open). It'll need a lot of truing, lapping, chamfering & polishing (up to 1k ish?) with wet 'n' dry paper and microfinish films, but I like doing that sort of thing.
As you can see from the first photos, it was pretty oily. I wanted to be gentle with it, so after a few hours with a brass brush & some elbow grease, it's cleaned up pretty well. There is still some surface oil to be removed (another hour or so with the brass brush), but what I really want to know is: How to leech out the oil in the stone? Lapping etc will remove some of the oily layer, but I'd like to get as much as possible out before that.
So far suggestions include:
My brother-in-law told me of a popular Scandinavian method to turn an oilstone back to a water stone, involving soaking it in very hot water and detergent for at least 24 hours, until oil leached out to the surface, then repeating this process 4 or 5 times.
Others were:
"soak it in WD40",
"Put it in the dishwasher",
"Burn the oil out" (!?!),
"Soak it in white spirit/paint thinner or charcoal lighter fluid",
"Boil it with a rag in dishwasher detergent",
"use oven cleaner and an SE razor blade" and so on.
What kind of preparation would you do?
Last edited: