What should I be doing to clean my WEPS stones?
- This topic has 32 replies, 18 voices, and was last updated 12/07/2016 at 1:41 pm by
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There are a number of factors in play here. I may be off the mark on some of these items; cleaning the platens may have more than one step or solution depending on many things.
- If the knives you are sharpening are not cleaned of all organic material, you could be introducing a layer that can polymerize into pretty strong glue (think Elmer’s or hide glue) that may bind the swarf and require different cleaning methods than just removing clean swarf. Residue from tape, wood, paint etc. can quickly foul abrasives.
- The diamonds are attached with either a nickel or cobalt based alloy which may be attacked by strong acids; stainless steels have high nickel content and anything that may dissolve the stainless swarf (which has fairly high nickel content) may also cause some diamonds to fall off. Weak acids that don’t attack the matrix holding the diamonds may take a long time to be effective on a stone highly loaded with stainless swarf. If the swarf is mostly iron, a weak acid will work much better than on stainless. Personally, I like sulfamic acid which is not toxic, a little stronger than vinegar and doesn’t smell. It also comes in solid form which is easy to store and make up whatever dilution necessary; a drop of dish detergent for a surfactant would help. I use it for descaling my espresso machine which has a lot of different alloys in contact with the water and it hasn’t hurt it in over 10 years. When I was in the Navy, they used sulfamic acid to descale the evaporators that were used to distill sea water. Another choice would be phosphoric acid; I’d probably just use the metal prep variety that is made to use before primer on steel. Detergents made for dishwashers can be pretty powerful and may be a good solution but may attack adhesives over time. Careful research should be done prior to using anything that may affect the platens.
- The swarf has sharp edges and can be much harder than the matrix securing the diamonds; it can become embedded and very hard to remove. Swarf can load the pores of ceramic stones; it can build up on any abrasive medium and cause unexpected scratches. The solution is to use light strokes. I also like to keep my ceramic and diamond stones wet with water and a tiny amount of detergent to help wash away the swarf as it is produced and to keep the temperature down where metal is being scraped off of the blade. The water and detergent also helps keep debris from flying all over the rods and ball joints, but it can be messy and may promote corrosion.
- Swarf that isn’t cleared relatively quickly may expand as it corrodes making it much harder to remove. Abrasive cleansers may over time help erode the matrix that holds the diamonds.
Maybe Clay can show some microscope pictures of various stones before and after cleaning with various methods.
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I like the ultrasonic Idea for a occasional deep clean, however, for regular maintenance I use regular dish soap and a battery operated pot scrubbing sonic scrubber. You can find the tool (here).
Eddie Kinlen
M1rror Edge Sharpening Service, LLC
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I recently got a pro pack2 and after breaking in the stones on old kitchen knives I used my sonicare tooth brush with an old brush head to clean all my stones. I used windex glass cleaner and the stones and ceramics looked brand new again. Thanks to everyone here for sharing their knowledge and expierience with the wicked edge system. My Henckels twin pro knives are now sharper then the day the left the factory.I could not have done it without the help of this forum.
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