oil damaged hone, what to do?

[Smythe]

You could also soak the stone in kerosene or gasoline (petrol), it will dissolve most other oils especially if the old oil has dried up (varnished).

When lapping a water-stone (or any stone) with diamond plate, use the lowest or coarsest grit you can get your hands on (220 or less)... and while lapping, you need a plentiful supply of water to quickly wash away abrasive slurry... otherwise the slurry will cut away the soft binder that holds the diamonds to the plate... the diamonds will then fall off the plate and be lost down the drain long before the end of their overfull fife.

 

[peribeca]

wow; so that is what happened to my diamond plate:cry: the 200 grit is now down to smooth metal....wish I had known this before i started lapping up a storm:cry:

Lou

 

[Smythe]

[warn] Typo in my previous post...
... the diamonds will then fall off the plate and be lost down the drain long before the end of their USEFUL fife.[/warn]

Lou, take heart... you are not the only one to learn this lesson. Complications often occur when we use new technology to solve old problems.

 

[chti_lolo]

I have sometimes used coarse silicon carbide powder on glass (64 grits) , it worked pretty good on a hard stone and seemed to get finer and finer while lapping. Is there major drawbacks using this method?

 

[Smythe]

I use this method too 1/8th inch glass sheet liberated from an old flat-bed scanner, and 220 grit SIC cheaply available from eBay as Rock Polishing powder.

You only need a pinch of the powder (about as much as you can pick up between your thumb and forefinger) with a little water on the surface of the glass and almost any stone natural or man-made will bleed slurry quickly. It does help to saturate the stone with water first. If things start getting dry then splash on enough drops of water to get things freely moving again (think Dilucot).

Disadvantage/drawbacks... depends on how you look at it, when done lapping you may want to clean the stone as there may be some SIC grits embedded in the surface (a plastic brush or the palm of your hand answers the call)... A Coticule for example is yellow and SIC is light gray like steel, so it's easy to see if you cleaned it well.

However there is not much worry if you didn't get them all. As you hone, any remaining SIC particles will brake down into smaller and smaller particles having little to no effect on sharpening... then to be washed away during the dilution stage.

 

[chti_lolo]

Thanks, I feared that for soft binder some SIC particles could sink into the hone without breaking down or that for coarse
hones (like ceramic...) some particle get embedded under the surface.