Eww, avoid playing with acid.
Consider, even if you are being safe, they can give off caustic fumes that can mess up things in the same area. I once used hot vinegar for etching, left it in a cruddy old crock pot, and forgot about it for 2 days. This was out in a corner of my garage. All my tools on that side of the garage rusted. The mower rusted. Heck the door springs rusted. So…if you insist on using acid as a cleaner, you cannot spend too much time researching.
In an earlier post, someone mentioned using an old eraser. I tried it, and it worked pretty well. I used the old tan gum type, not the red rubber ones. I also have a large version of this made to clean belt sander belts. Cheap, safe, and cheap.
+1 I don’t think any cleaning solution is require, or at most something mild. Stones don’t get “dirty” the pores just get clogged up. Water and tooth brush/mild scrubbing pad is normally fine. Erasers also work.
My fear with anything too caustic is it would weaken the binder.
On the diamonds I have just used hot water and a stiff finger nail brush. They clean up quickly and completely.
On my cermic hones (non-WEPS) I just use whatever kind of kitchen cleanser I have around… make a bit of a paste with water, put it on, let it sit for a few minutes, then hit it with the same nail brush. They are not brand new looking when I get done, but plenty close. The biggest thing is that they seem to cut just fine when I am done.
Phil
Clay, I have had the edit tools go missing myself… Often I just toggle “compatibility mode” on/off in IE 9…and refresh the page to bring it back.
I have also spent half an hour or much more composing a reply…pressed the “submit” button…and had it all dissappear. It has happened so often, from several different machines, that I have taken to copying my reply and saving it to a Word document, before daring to hit submit…
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.
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).
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.
I’ve never tried to clean it, but I think it would difficult to remove grit from within the matrix of fibers. It’s probably like cleaning carpet - you can only get it so clean.
I’ve never tried to clean it, but I think it would difficult to remove grit from within the matrix of fibers. It’s probably like cleaning carpet – you can only get it so clean. [/quote]
I didn't mean to clean it to a near brand new state so one could apply different abrasive compound. I was rather thinking about metal particles that might eventually clog it. With diamond film I need to clean it after each use, otherwise performance quickly degrades. With leather I occasionally reapply abrasive compounds on top of what's already on it without much cleaning. With nano I'm not sure if I can treat it like leather - add same abrasive on top of whatever's on the strop already.
It hasn’t been an issue yet, since I only use nano to put toothy microbevels. But at some point I’ll need to deal with it, I think.
