Telling the difference

[David White]

How do you tell the difference between an oil-stone and a wet-stone?

David.

[Harvey Van Sickle]

On 11 Dec 2004, David White wrote

Unless this is a riddle that's gone over my head, the obvious answer is "You don't, since the latter's a "whet" stone, and you use oil on it".

(Or so I was led to believe.)

[Set Square]

This may not be a cast iron definition, but . . .

An oil stone is usually brick-shaped and grey in colour - and you sharpen chisels and plane blades on it, lubricated by oil.

A wet stone is lighter in colour, and often circular - and rotates in a trough of water as you turn a handle. It's used for sharpening knives. The butcher in the village where I was brought up used to use one.

[Rob Morley]

I suspect whetstone is a general term, covering any bit of stone-like stuff used for sharpening blades, so could be applied to one using water, oil or nothing at all as a lubricant/coolant.

[Dave Baker]

Firstly it's 'whetstone' not wetstone.

'Whet' is actually a word. It means the work period in harvesting between the time a scythe is sharpened and when it needs sharpening again. So a whetstone was originally a stone used for sharpening scythes - or knives or swords. Usually used dry and often a big cylindrical millstone type affair worked by a foot treadle.

An oilstone is used wet. Usually lubricated by light oil or paraffin. The reasons for this are complex but the lubricant combines with particles that break off the stone and forms a slurry which does most of the sharpening and actually protects the surface of the stone. Used dry these types of stone will not cut very well and will abrade and deform rapidly.

There are also Japanese water stones developed, or perhaps discovered, hundreds of years ago for making katanas which are used soaked in water rather than oil and are commonly thought to be the best knife and blade sharpening stones in the world. A carbon steel katana made by an Ayasugi master can cut through several inches of bamboo or a human body in a single stroke. Not that you would dream of using a master's sword for such things and Takegiri, the art and practice of cutting bamboo trunks, is one of the most demanding of sword skills.

[raden]

In message , David White writes

To whet - to sharpen by rubbing or to make more acute

That's English, that is ...

[David White]

Thanks for the English lesson, Goeff!

David

[raden]

In message , David White writes

No probs Divad