Norton Washita Oilstone - What do I do?

[Aldarith]

I rediscovered an old Norton Washita oilstone in an obscure basement cupboard today.

I have no clue how to use it , any instruction would be wonderful!

It has the original box and all the works. I think I remember someone using olive oil on it ages ago, but that sounds bad.

 

[professorchaos]

No idea!

 

[ADRSPACH]

Treat it as sub 1000 grit stone. Perhaps you are lucky and yours will be finer. Friend has one from me and is lucky and uses it for setting bevels.

 

[mparker762]

Some of the really old norton ouachitas are actually translucents. Clean it up with oven cleaner or brake cleaner and see if you can shine a flashlight through it, or see the sun through it.

 

[Aldarith]

If you're sure the oven cleaner/brake cleaner won't hurt the thing, I will do this! I'll be away for the weekend, but I can try it on monday!

 

[SliceOfLife]

Vintage Washita are yellow/brown and usually a little speckled. They are very fine grit. They were used as low grit hones because they have large pores. They're not worth using with a razor. Using the grit to abrade is tricky and painfully slow. Using the pores to abrade requires more pressure than you'd ever want to use with a razor.

They're rough tool stones. Good for things like Chisels and machetes. Not good for thin blades.

 

[Aldarith]

Understood.

This guy is gray - Does that indicate anything?

 

[Slash McCoy]

It will be a slow cutter, relative to the fineness of the stone and the pressure you would use for a razor. These are pretty good for pocketknives. Translucents can be used as a fine razor hone, but again, they are very slow cutters.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Grey but not translucent is probably a soft arkansas.

 

[mparker762]

This guy is gray - Does that indicate anything?

Not really no. Arkansas stones can be nearly any color in any grade, white, black, gray, blue, purple, orange, red, pink, brown, etc, as well as speckled and swirled combinations of these. The color comes from the binder, not the abrasive which is transparent quartz, thus color doesn't really mean much. I've got a pink and cream swirled translucent, a white and gray swirled translucent, and a red soft, and a white-with-orange-speckles hard, and a gray hard. Black high-grades (black surgical) are fairly common, as are white high-grades (translucent), but you can find them in all sorts of colors, it's just that those are common enough to be considered "standard" high-grade arkansas. FWIW Charnley Forest hones are the same type of stone as Arkansas stones (novaculite), but being from a different formation in England tend to have different characteristic colors; blue is more common in Charnley Forest hones for example.