Clean & Flatten Dirty Old Oils Stones - Old School Method 

Useful video Matthew - thanks. Re. your comments from the back of the box, around 3:40: "aloxide" is of course just aluminium oxide abrasive, in contrast to silicon carbide (aka "carborundum") which you mentioned earlier. The classic oilstones with those are Norton India (aluminium oxide) and Norton Crystolon (silicon carbide).

Wow..your dad sharpened a lot!

Good video. I wonder how many people, when they take up wood working, have no idea that they'll spend as much time honing and learning about honing. Dark art.

A tip at 6:34: when you're pouring from a full container, orientate it so the opening's at the top (or to one side if it's partly empty). It'll "glug" a lot less, allowing you to pour more slowly, with less spillage and better control.

Turned out good,a lot of work.

Greetings sir Matthew... Dawn dishwashing liquid is very effective at cutting grease and oil. If you want to use it to clean a stone just make sure the stone can handle soap and water soak, then keep changing the water and rinsing the stone until no more soap is present. Allow water to dry out completely, then use oil of choice. A friend of mine here on YT , his channel is Fun in the woods, Really Big Monkey 1 uses non gumming cylinder honing oil, he's a machinist and fabricates much of his own camping equipment. Great video. I use DMT Continuous Surface bench diamond plates and Spyderco bench stones for sharpening. They don't dish and can be easily cleaned with Bar keepers friend cleanser, a non metallic abrasive pad ,water, and allowed to completely dry before storage, water to lubricate if desired

One very efficient solvent for oil is naphtha. I am not sure how it compares with paraffin but I have used it for removing old dried up lubricant from photographic shutters and it lifts it all up and cleans perfectly. It is also generally used for removing adhesive (e.g. leather glue) and lifting stains from clothing and carpets. It is a very volatile solvent, a bit of it spilt on your hands will evaporate in 1/2 minute or so with no discernible trace left behind. Also, it doesn’t leave much of a smell since it evaporates so easily. Given its volatile nature though, I wouldn’t put it in an open container, as it would just evaporate off quickly. One would need to fill a sealable container with naphtha, dip the stone(s) in it and then seal the container up with its cover. This would leave the naphtha in there to do its thing. That would be something I would try, given the good removal results I’ve had with oil/lubricant. Thanks for this informative video.

I remember watching my grandfather, about 60 years ago, soaking his stone in petrol for a couple of days. After he took it out, he set light to it and let all the petrol and dissolved oil burn off. He would then reface it on a thick glass sheet using some sort of fine sand. He came from along line of cabinet makers and his tools were always razor sharp. I have never tried his method but have had good results soaking in caustic soda for a few days, followed with a good long soak in a degreaser [I use [Elbow Grease brand]. I level the stone on 4" wide emery belt stuck onto a 3 foot long granite strip with double sided tape. Works a treat, and even if the stone has always been used with oil, I can usually use with water after this treatment. Some [not all] stones, just seem to work better with water. Forgot to say, I use the Elbow Grease sprayed onto the emery to act as a lubricant as I level out the stone.

Many old barbers used to soak their corundum barbers hones in petroleum jelly to reduce the depth of the scratches. This is in a few old barbering Manuals I've read in my pursuit of traditional Shaving lore.

You can actually use the Paraffin as a lubricant during sharpening, which seems counter-intuitive considering it`s used for cleaning the stones. I have used loose silicon-carbide powder, Wet/Dry Sandpaper, and Diamond plates to flatten Oilstones. All of it worked, with varying degrees of speed. I prefer the Wet/Dry Sandpaper cause it`s the least messy and doesn`t destroy my diamond plates. Thanks for the video, I enjoyed your calm manner of speaking and the matter of fact discussion of your method.

Everyone says you can't mix oil with water but there's a video of Cliff Stamp talking against it. As long there is a lubricant on top the steel will not overheat. Water will not clean swarf on oil stones but with soap you can solve it. I have tried this on a cheap stone and it works as just fine.

Very helpful. Thank you.

I've had good luck using concrete drive or side walk - it worked but you need to use the old ones

I realize I'm a few years late to provide useful & timely info, but: some silicon carbide powder would've been awfully helpful here.

NOTE: One of the other videos recommended doing the fine side first and then the course side after, so the course grit would not contaminate the fine side. Not sure if this is true or not. Very good video, and your method seems to work well. thanks from Canada.

Good stuff. Thanks

Some people start by rubbing on a concrete sidewalk, parking lot, or cinder block. Still takes some work, but goes much faster for the coarse work.

Buy a leveling stone. Draw a gid with pencl on the stone then use the leveling stone until all the pencil marks are gone.

Wet-dry sandpaper will stick to glass with water. A silicone mat or rubber shelf liner or wet cloth will hold the glass in place.

Interesting video. Maybe try some emery backed sand paper next time. It's much tougher then regular sand paper (generally called wet/dry sand paper). How did the stones treat you after you flattened them? Did you go with water, or did you decide to stick with oil?

I still have my grandfather's stones. He had a few oil stones and actually some natural stones from before the days of them being branded and sold all over the world. One of them is an Arkansas black fine stone that is roughly 8"x2" and nearly 4" thick. It would be a $500+ stone these days but he bought it in the early 1950's for $1.49. It's lightly used and I still have the box with the price on it from a local shop in Ohio. Oilstones in general have lost popularity with the improvement in synthetic water stones. I haven't used an oil stone in a very long time.

6:45 Here in the states, we dye our kerosene and fuel oil so that the govt can nab truck drivers who use it as an alternative to diesel fuel in their trucks. Diesel has a road tax added to it that is waved on home heating oils such as fuel oil and kerosene which is why the dye is added. When a truck driver is pulled over for a "random check" along side the highway, they can "dip the tank" and see if there is any dye in their diesel. If there is, they get fined.

The cheapest way of flattening is using two concave stones to flatten each other. Since both need to be worn out on the same spot they cancel each other problems and you solve both at the same time. Specially usefull for those extra worn stones that would require several sheets of sandpaper to fix. For sharpening knives as long as no light passes under a ruler at the end it's flat enough for shaving sharp edge. For razors and hanging hair test you may need further flattening.

yeah, about the old metal cans back in the day, we're in the plastic and cheap age now

it is a good procedure to sand the edges a just little as a finish. Then the knife edge doesn't catch as easily when you sharpen knives on the stone. Also make the stone more resistant against chipping off corners and edges from the stone.

Purple Power will also strip these clean of oil swarf. once stripped the stone can be used with 💧 water amd or winded or window cleaner liquid which is my preferred method

Good video! Thinks- might be easier to do the donkey work with multi tool or sander then flatten last bit by hand! I have a 40 yrs. Old oilstone could take a while!

I've been doing just this today. Exactly like you except I didn't clean the stone first as it wasn't very dirty but like your first stone a bit shallow in the middle. This caused me much work and I found by marking the stones surface with a sharpy pen it showed me only the ends were being worn down. So I changed tack and by bringing the stone closer toward me end on I could concentrate all my effort to grind down those high spots. Also you do not need to stick your abrasive paper down you only need to wet it underneath and it will stick to the glass very well.

Awesome vid mate! Who makes that giant yellow roll of double stick tape!!! ?

Belt or disk sander?

They make diamond wheels you can put on an angle grinder. A lot of people use belt sanders to true hone stones up too.

I seem to have made my stone is now totally unabrasive. It was really badly dished and I was getting nowhere with the wet and dry I was using, so I started rubbing it on a concrete slab then moved onto 60 grit sand paper. I'd also tried to get the old oil out using petrol and then Gunk. But now the stone (on the fine side) is somewhat less dished but shiny, and the chisels just go straight over it. Any help would be appreciated.

You should listen to Deep Purple doing this job.

Interesting video and it did not start with "Hi Guys" which I absolutely detest. I am trying to flatten my double sided oil stone but would an investment in water stones be more environmentally friendly. I was a little worried by the copious use of paraffin. So oilstone or water stones for moderate DIY use?

You could have drawn pencil marks across the stones to check for flatness or rather effectiveness of process.

Hello maybe you know what grit is on small stone (red/white) ? Maybe You know name of it?

Where can i get thick flat glass like that? Thank you very much !

Think it was u that told me about this method on Reddit?

Did you use the paraffin to get out the old oil? If you did why would that be needed? The primary objectives of cleaning them and flattening them is to get embedded metal out of the stone? Does the old embedded oil needed to be removed? Couldn't you just use mineral oil as lubricant instead of the paraffin? Please let me know. I will really appreciate it.

tip...use a pencil...draw lines on the stone...itll show the touching surface much easier

odd how many tubers have a british accent. there must be 50% of total tube population with brit accent.

I only ever knew paraffin as wax, i have a paraffin wax bath that heats the wax for different uses. Thia paraffin you are using is it the highly refined mineral oil used in cosmetics and medicine or the paraffin used as a fuel? please can you tell the brand, and composition of the product you are using, please? another thing you do not recommend in the video to wear breathing protection? help, thank you ns

The only way to dress that last stone will be with a diamond burr in a shaper to get it flat, we do it with out lapping stones.

Cleaning stones yes. Flattening to achieve 0.1 degree? Your hand movement when sharpening has more deviation.

I thought the old school method was glass and sharp sand?

Doesn't soaking the stone in kerosene remove the oil and allow you to use the stones with water?

The small stone looks like it could be an India/Arkansas combo.

I just whet silica sand over glass and the stone will be flat.

I think it would be safe to toss the old boxes, no?

I would clean all with dawn and then lap all of them to bring back to life.

Anybody that already has a sheet of glass should probably just use lapping film on the glass as their honing method. Why bother with the old stones? You basically have put into place two honing systems in order to keep one in fettle. Not really the way of the craftsman. You could have honed every plane iron and chisel in a decent sized kit on the glass (probably several times) in the time it took to flatten the old oilstone, and the bugger still probably isn't as flat as the glass.

You don't need to wear gloves with paraffin is good for the skin especially if you have eczema

IMHO - why even spend any time scrubbing em, down, just soak em for a good while then go straight to lapping em flat. Just my 2 cents is all. Cheers