Fighting the inevitable-rust removal for lazy people

These tools have followed me for many a mile....

My grandfather gave these to me, oh.... 25-30 years ago? This is pretty much the way that they have always looked and I hadn't really given it much thought. Then, the other day while obsessively polishing some new-to-me tool, I suffered a moment of all too rare insight. Some of the tools that I already have are pretty cool! Seeing something every day, well, you tend to not see it anymore.

And I do use these nearly every day. My hands know them and the sharp edges have been rounded down from decades and generations. New tools are harsh and bright and the steel feels funny. Brittle, rather than strong and resilient. These are old, but are beginning to lose the battle against dissolution. Ah, time (and spit!), the universal solvent....

Electrolysis bucket. Rebar distributed around the perimeter acts as the anode and connects to the positive lead on the battery charger. Wow! Ugly bucket AND charger, haha! New chargers have protective blocking diodes and stuff, so they might not work. Not an issue here, obviously. Hey Dad, if you were wondering where your old battery charger went, here it is...

Rusty stuff is suspended in the middle. The rusty tools (shown here in a metal basket) are the cathode and get connected to the negative lead. Make sure that the rusty tools don't touch the rebar, or all this will be for nought.

Baking soda, a few tablespoons worth, improves the conductivity of the water that will fill the bucket. You can use more powerful chemicals, but cheap and safe baking soda works fine. These tools weren't too rusty, so I left them in the bucket overnight @2 amps, then scrubbed with a synthetic pad.

IMPORTANT! Dry and oil the newly clean stuff IMMEDIATELY, or it will instantly rust! Electrolysis, acid washing, de-greasing..... all of these processes leave the surface of the metal unprotected. You need to oil or paint right away. Today, not tomorrow!

See the nice, burnished Gray finish? Electrolysis doesn't harm well-adhered paint or bluing, but will oxidize bare steel to a nice dark gray. Fine by me. Check the progress periodically, but don't worry. The tools won't dissolve and you won't get shocked. You can put your hand right in the water and, provided that your charger works properly, you won't feel a thing. Not even a tingle. At these low (sub-6 amp) power settings, you don't harm the tools any and it will make the rust disappear. This is the safest way to remove rust, bar none. Rust removal for lazy people.

**Caution!** The electrolysis process removes rust and...... sometimes the black finish on Japanese tools is a RUST finish! You can put a thick rust oxide finish on steel by allowing/forcing the metal to rust, then submerging the rusted metal in boiling water. The red iron oxide turns into black magnetite..... rust blackening. THIS MAY OR MAY NOT BE REMOVED BY ELECTROLYSIS! I have used electrolysis on some blades.... fine. Other blades... finish was removed. Go figure...... I'll let you know when I learn more.

"Soft" waterstones for kitchen knives

A soft waterstone for sharpening knives.

 I like a SUPER flat bevel on tools so that I can be sure that I am finishing right to the edge. Also, then you know what you've got as far as bevel angle goes. If my plane blade is at a 30 degree angle and is still dulling too fast..... well, then I've got issues with the steel. I can't bring the angle any higher because I will run into clearance angle interference so that pretty well means that the plane is only good for certain woods...... The key is to know your angles.

With plane blades at least, flat is best for me. I like flat chisel bevels too, but that is more out of habit than anything else. A rounded bevel can be good on a mortising chisel, for instance, to give support to an edge that sees a lot of abuse..... Most of the Japanese tataki-nomi that I see with rounded bevels have VERY short handles, though. The westerns often have NO handles, and mushroomed ferrules, haha! I still can't get used to the feeling of wailing away on a chisel, using steel hammers no less!

I'm going off on a different track here, but one thing that I would like to write about, in the future, is how old tools have been altered by their previous owners. I have been joyously reading Stephen Shepherd's "Full Chisel" blog....

http://www.fullchisel.com/blog/

MANY years of wisdom here, both in terms of his experience working with period tools AND multiple years of blog postings. Great stuff! A recurring theme is the knowledge of those who came before. They did that stuff for a reason, you know. Wisdom of the ancients and all that, but also that the last guy to sharpen the tool........ he might have used that thing every day for 20 years. Maybe the bevel is set at 35 degrees because at 25 it won't hold. Do you REALLY think that you know more than he did, based on some generic "rule" that you read in some expensive magazine? Just sayin'...... maybe try it as it is for a while, then MAYBE change it. I would save a lot of time if I followed this advice.

On yeah, wisdom of the ancients. Finishing stone lore. Soft steel, hard stone. Hard steel, soft stone. Kitchen knives=hard steel=soft stone. This is algebra that I can understand.

Soft Akapin waterstone.

4 sides skin, lightly  varnished.

Test subjects, a small laminated kitchen knife and my favorite chisel. The chisel is to test for any unacceptable tendency to dish and to gauge the abrasive qualities ie: size, durability, consistency and slurry formation.

Pretty even water absorption.

8000'ish hazy finish.

This stone was soft enough to scratch with my fingernail, so I assumed that it would be ridiculously prone to dishing, but this was not the case. It firmed up and ended up being about as soft as my 5000 rika. Pink/brown slurry formed very quickly, turned black with iron particles, then just as quickly turned brown. VERY smooth, it feels like sharpening on a piece of velvet. Don't let your edges drag or you'll get gouges.

Time for the real deal. Baseline is synthetic 1000 king, 3000 suehiro rika, 5000 suehiro rika.

Easy as can be, the slurry cushions the action and lets the blade float, but keeps it from digging in. Tolerably fast, too. Jumping from a 5000 synthetic to this is a bit much. I would use an intermediate, maybe my jyunsyou.

This knife even has layered jigane, not ren-tetsu, but definitely layers. Old 1940's iron. The stone really brought out the definition between metals. The stone makes too much slurry to leave a mirrored finish, but it does leave a VERY fine hazy surface. Soothing, not harsh. 

Synthetic. Notice the lack of definition.

Smooth, hazy mirror. Nice.

Hopefully the next stone works as well. It WILL need a bit of work.....

Amazing what people will buy....

The best of both worlds- Comparing american and Japanese sharpening stones

OK, I'm done playing with these Arkansas's, time to put them to work. I will also evaluate where they fit in the whole grit hierarchy. I've got more blades to sharpen!

Here's a new one for you. Boiler Bay sandstone, from one of the sites where I did field work and pretended to study intertidal marine invertebrates and algae. Too much fun to call it work. Anyways, I had been using this for rough work on axes and garden tools and it worked great, but the hardness was too variable. It is mostly soft, but harder in some spots, so it tends to wear very unevenly. Most of this stuff is too soft to be practical, but some harder deposits survive the coastal surf..... this piece was flattened to provide a working face.

Medium grit Aoto waterstones are cut so that the working surface is  perpendicular to the primary cleavage plane or layers of deposition, so I took another sample and cut it thus. It seemed to be the right thing to do because the stone works WAY better. The stone composition is more consistent now and even though the stone FEELS really soft, it is surprisingly resistant to dishing. This thing is actually usable, coarse, but somewhat comparable to my "real" Japanese aoto and is a fast cutter. It's got a few scratchy bits that I may try to track down, but it's not a big deal because the scratches are so shallow, they sharpen out quickly.

Easy and fun to use, too soft for small blades but works fine on big chisels and plane blades. Very thirsty and hard to keep wet. Around 600-800 grit? This is the coarsest stone that I have. This Umehiro chisel is pretty hard, but no trouble for this stone.

Soft Arkansas? and diamond nagura.

Mystery slate, no nagura.

Surgical black Arkansas, ODC slurry.

A nice dull mirror finish using the ODC.

I went through the grits pretty fast, not being too fussy. There are still more tools that need sharpening......

Boy, this plain carbon steel is easy. This is from the mystery brown stone.

Bright mirror from the surgical black.

Smoky mirror from the Ozuku asagi. The Sblack made the edge shiny, but the Ozuku made it fine and even.

I really wanted to see how these stones worked on the soft wrought iron used on the plane blades...

This was using the coarse side of the mystery brown stone.

And finished on the top, diamond nagura.

Tools are sharp, for now....

Now how do these stones compare with what I've got, grit-wise? VERY general, just impressions of overall finish and swap-ability. The waterstones are universally faster, but softer and require more maintenance. WAY more expensive (synthetic waterstones aren't TOO expensive, but are such a messy PITA that I only use them on occasion)

Japanese aoto, soft Arkansas?, medium Arkansas?

Mystery slate, mystery brown stone, jyunsyouhonyama.

Inky the mysterious Chinese inkstone/waterstone, surgical black Arkansas.

I'm still looking for an equivalent to the Ozuku asagi. I have been really pleased with this stone, I just wish that it was bigger.

This stuff is soooo fun!