To Clean Your Knife Sharpening Stone you have to follow 3 simple steps:
- Use Honing Oil to flush Away Embedded Metallic Fillings.
- Getting Rid of Oil Residue
- Flattening Your Sharpening Stone
In our homes, fast DIY hacks around some problems did save the day. One quick hack we’re going to talk about today is how to clean knife sharpening stone. We’ve all been frustrated by a blunt knife at some point in time.
You want to chop those veggies in your kitchen, but the blade won’t sink in, it can be tiresome. You might even get cut. A blunt knife should be a no-no in your kitchen. To keep your knife sharp, you most likely got yourself a sharpening stone.
With a sharpening stone, you should be able to keep that knife sharp and slicing through items such as meat and veggies fast. There are many types of knife sharpening stones are available; like diamond Stones, natural stones , carborundum stone and more.
In the diamond stone, micro-sized diamond pieces on its exterior will sharpen your blade, while in the natural stone, coarse and grits do the trick.
Whichever sharpening stone you choose to go with should work gloriously on your blade as long as you keep it clean: Sharpening stones can get dull too.
When metal fillings embed in the grits and coarse of the stone, your once glorious sharpening stone turns into a useless piece. And not just metal fillings, oil residues and dirt too can interfere with the course of the stone.
A blade sharpening stone could, therefore, do with some quick cleaning every after use. Stealing short moments in your tight schedule to clean your sharpening stone before storing it will be beneficial in the long run. Your stone will keep on working like a champ.
Therefore, if you are experiencing troubles with that sharping stone you bought a year ago, don’t cast it out just yet. A few DIY hacks should be able to bring the blade sharpening stone to its glorious ways: Here’s how.
Materials you’re going to Use to Clean Your Sharpening Stone
If you spot lustrous gray streaks on your blade sharpening stone, know this is an indication of debris build-up. The materials you are going to need for this cleaning activity depends on the type of stone and how you use it. Here’s a list of materials you should arm yourself with:
- WD-40 ( Mineral spirits as an alternative to WD-40 )
- Steel Wool to remove oil
- Honing oil to flush out any metal fling residues
- Scrubbing sponge or toothbrush
- Cloth or paper towel
- Warm running water
- Silicon carbide sandpaper
3 Simple Steps to Clean Your Sharpening Stone
1. Use Honing Oil To flush Away Embedded Metallic Fillings.
Honing oil is industrially used to dislodge and carry away embedded metal fillings from stone. Rub a ¼-size of the oil onto the stone and then using your finger or a toothbrush, massage the oil into the crevices in a circular motion until the metal filings rise from these stone pores.
Next, use a damp cloth to wipe away the metal filling. A paper towel could do the trick too. Jut wet the cloth or towel, wring it out, and then gently wipe the surface of your blade sharpening stone, leaving no metallic flecks behind.
Rinse the stone in high-pressure water for about 2 minutes so that the pressure of the water flashes away any tiny remaining metal filings. No soap is needed; just the warm water running at high pressure is enough to do the job. After that, wipe the stone dry.
You can also use the honing oil to lubricate the surfaces when sharpening your blade. Just apply a small amount of honing oil onto the stone surface before you begin to sharpen your knife. The honing oil does not only reduce friction but also keeps off those metallic flecks from sticking into the crevices.
Just make sure to place a towel underneath the stone during cleaning so that the metal flecks won’t make a mess on your table or flow.
2. Getting Rid of Oil Residue
Dirt and grime, too, in the sharpening stone pores interferes with its coarseness. Use WD-40 to give your blade sharpening stone a blitz. WD-40 is a specially-formulated kerosene-based solution perfect for getting rid of grime on any surface.
But make sure to use it in a well-ventilated space as it’s got a foul odor. Pump bottle WD-40 is better than the spray can WD-40 as it contains no fluorocarbons.
As an alternative, you can use opt to dilute hard oil residues in mineral oils. Mineral spirits work well, too, to loosen grime from abrasive surfaces.
To remove dirt and grime, start by coating the entire surface of the sharpening stone with the WD-40 spray then scrub with the steel wool.
Scrubbing should help with those hardened debris and adhesive oils by breaking them up into tiny particles that can be flushed away when rinsing. Therefore, scrub until you see the dirt and grime is loosened from the surface.
Next, rinse the stone in running warm water to wash away the grime then dry it using a soft cloth or paper towel.
3. Flattening Your Sharpening Stone
So, which part of the stone do you use more?
Most people concentrate on the middle of the stone, and therefore after a few sharpening sessions, this part gets hollow. Flattening your stone to even out the surfaces is, therefore, necessary.
After how many sharpening sessions should you flatten out the stone?
It’s recommended that you even out the stone surfaces after every 10 uses, but you can do it as often as you wish too.
To flatten the stone, start by moistening the stone with water and oil then drag it back and forth over the flattening plate until you get an even surface.
Most sharpening stones come with a silicon-carbide flattening plate you can use to even out the stone surface as soon as the middle part starts to get hollow. But if your sharpening stone didn’t come with one, get it online or from your local hardware.
Alternatively, you can sand away the raised surfaces and any metal filings using sandpaper. Just stick 100-grit-wet-dry sandpaper onto a flat surface then rub the wet sharpening stone over the sandpaper surface several times until you get an even surface with no metallic flecks.
You can also sand away any grooves where metal fillings would otherwise accumulate.
There you go, clean that old blade sharpening stone back to its great ways with the above quick hacks!
