Storing Water Stones between sharpening sessions

[ps.harris80]

Hi all

A quick question I hope.

What's the best way to store water stones between sharpening sessions, keep them soaking in water or let them dry out between sessions, or something else.

Thanks for any help with this.

Paul

 

[Droogs]

I leave mine in a tub of water and never have had a problem, including the stones being in the tub for the duration of the lock down

 

[D_W]

Hi all

A quick question I hope.

What's the best way to store water stones between sharpening sessions, keep them soaking in water or let them dry out between sessions, or something else.

Thanks for any help with this.

Paul

read the instructions for each type. Some are OK with a continuous soak, some are OK with the continuous soak but can't freeze, and some will not tolerate a continuous soak.

 

[IWW]

What D.W. said. All the stones I've had came with reasonable instructions for use & storage. Some stated quite clearly that they were NOT to be stored wet....

Cheers,

 

[D_W]

By the way, I have had several hundred different sharpening stones. I love stones, I love making stuff out of steel and optimizing the heat treatment, and I love sharpening stuff and figuring out how to get the most out of it.

that's just an aside - The front end of that was probably something like 75 or more synthetic stones, so I have a lot of experience with the synthetic stones up until about 8-10 years ago.

I had kings and besters in a tub. That tub dried up years ago, but I pulled the stones out and tried to give them to someone else who was in my shop - he declined because the king that I had in the tank is the double size and they take too long to soak (no problem, you leave them in water).

The bester 1200 and the red kings will soak forever - if the water gets funky, add a couple of drops of bleach - very little - it doesn't take much.

Shaptons were the other type I used a lot of. They are sort of a hard sticky stone but with a 15 minute soak, they are a different animal - smooth and faster wearing. They are very unlikely to tolerate a long soak, though - that to me became too much of an obligation and the consequence of over-soaking a stone may not be immediate failure but can be cracking or crazing.

Just leaning back to my point that these discussions can get super complicated as soon as someone starts talking about abrasive and binder and this or that - what you really owe it to yourself to do is find the simple instructions that come with each stone and just follow them. If you don't like the instructions, buy a different type of stone. I crazed a few stones even still following the instructions - nothing is D_W(fool)proof.

 

[ps.harris80]

Thanks for the replies.

None of my stones came with instructions, no surprise there though as they are the cheap double sided ones sold on eBay and Amazon to those of us who knew no better.

I suspect I will keep them in a container of water untill they are worn out and then get some better ones and read the instructions they should come with.

My workshop is in a heated building so no risk of freezing.

 

[Argus]

One interesting point to tail this off with. ……. No particular relevance to this topic other than it’s an anecdote. …. And I was at the time a little surprised.

For many years - late '80s onwards - I worked for a large Japanese corporation, so I was a regular visitor to Tokyo.

One day, we had some meetings arranged in a very swanky board-room way up high in one of several on the ‘executive’ suite, which meant that we got a great view over Tokyo and Yokohama, plus an exceptional lunch.

In the adjacent room as we went in, a couple of carpenters were in the process of replacing some of the wood paneling…. all nicely made joints etc – not the average shop-fitting, but top quality stuff.
They were finishing, packing up their kit and I was amazed to see a full set of plastic-handled chisels and western-style tools going into various boxes….

There was an obvious language barrier and as they were a little late finishing, they were in a hurry to get out, so sadly, that’s as far as it got.

 

[shed9]

Thanks for the replies.

None of my stones came with instructions, no surprise there though as they are the cheap double sided ones sold on eBay and Amazon to those of us who knew no better.

I suspect I will keep them in a container of water untill they are worn out and then get some better ones and read the instructions they should come with.

My workshop is in a heated building so no risk of freezing.

If they are unbranded with no instructions I agree with keeping them in water. Of the potential outcomes of unknown maintenance instructions this is less likely to cause issue in this scenario.

 

[D_W]

One interesting point to tail this off with. ……. No particular relevance to this topic other than it’s an anecdote. …. And I was at the time a little surprised.

For many years - late '80s onwards - I worked for a large Japanese corporation, so I was a regular visitor to Tokyo.

One day, we had some meetings arranged in a very swanky board-room way up high in one of several on the ‘executive’ suite, which meant that we got a great view over Tokyo and Yokohama, plus an exceptional lunch.

In the adjacent room as we went in, a couple of carpenters were in the process of replacing some of the wood paneling…. all nicely made joints etc – not the average shop-fitting, but top quality stuff.
They were finishing, packing up their kit and I was amazed to see a full set of plastic-handled chisels and western-style tools going into various boxes….

There was an obvious language barrier and as they were a little late finishing, they were in a hurry to get out, so sadly, that’s as far as it got.

the japanese version of ebay would support what you're talking about though there are tons of japanese style chisels there.

Western planes are a lot less common, same with western saws.

 

[MJ80]

I try to keep them in the water, but ended up getting too paranoid about how cold my workshop gets. Nowadays they are on the shelf and go for a soak for an hour before I have a sharpening