The care and feeding of the stropping wheel

[Ken S]

Another welcome to the forum, Pat.

If you don't stray too far from Grepper's advice, you will never go wrong.

I reread this topic before starting to write. It brought back happy memories of Mike40, one of my favorite forum friends. Mike no longer posts; he has become deeply involved in his creative woodwork. I miss Mike's thoughts.

The fortunate part of this dilemma is that the worst case scenario solution is just purchasing a replacement leather honing wheel. I don't believe such a radical solution is necessary. It is, however, a good backup. Borrowing an idea from a youtube, I tried using a cleaner called Goop. No miracles, but it did seem to make a difference. I would think gentle cleaning with dishwashing detergent or saddle soap would be worth a try.

The leather honing wheel is hearty. Don't give up.

Keep us posted.

Ken

[Herman Trivilino]

With that said, my original manual has been my guide since purchase (ver 7.1). Page 128 of that manual says a honing compound application lasts for 5 to 10 tools (optimistic, in my experience); then (quote) "Then re-impregnate the honing wheel with a few drops of oil and apply fresh honing compound. ... Do not let the compound dry, apply more oil if necessary."

Now that you mention it, I think my 14-year-old manual says the same thing. I haven't looked in years, but here goes.

Yup, on page 113 of mine, which is the 5th edition.

That must be where I originally got the idea to keep adding oil. Jeff Farris ran this forum for many years, and his advice was to apply oil only once, at the beginning of its life. By the time I heard that, I was in trouble as mine was way over-oiled.

Now, the 2013 version (edition 9.9) says the same thing on page 44.

I understand that the new T-8 comes with a tube of oil, used to prepare the honing wheel for its first use.

Wish I'd discovered this forum earlier. Silly me, following the manual's advice over the years I'd say my strop is no longer impregnated, but closer to saturated! Each time I fired up the SG2000 the wheel would seem dry. I'd add a few drops of oil, then honing compound, then (if there were many knives or chisels to do) more oil, etc.

I made the same mistake. I now know better. There is plenty of oil in the compound, so never add more oil. Ever!

I used a putty knife to scrape the crud off the surface of the leather honing wheel. I continued to use it, adding compound when needed, and scraping off crud after honing. After a few cycles of this the oil gets worked out.

As has already been mentioned, one chap ran his through the automatic dishwasher with success. I've never found it necessary to do that!

[WolfY]

Adding to much oil is easily done as the leather soaks it up easy. Much better to under oil then to over oil. Tormek recommend 3/4 of the enclosed tube for the T-8 and I would use 1/3. Always easy to add lated if you feel you need.

[Ken S]

Excellent comment, WolfY.

Before commenting, I reread through this topic. (Again, I had forgotten already doing the same thing recently.) A quiet reading through this topic is time well spent.

I have broken in five Tormek leather honing wheels, including one using no oil. The no oil one was at the recommendation of a Tormek demonstrator. The theory was that one of the components of Tormek Honing Compound is the same oil used separately on the leather honing wheel, therefore, initial oiling should not be necessary. This actually works. The drawback is the black flakes the leather wheel sheds. Quite messy! Tormek must have flirted with this theory briefly. Some of the older jig videos on the website showed flakes. Hopefully these videos are long replaced.

The problem with overoiling is that it must be done initially by a new user, before the user has developed a feel for the Tormek. This is part of "the learning curve" discussed elsewhere on this forum. We really need an in depth set up and initial use video which thoroughly demonstrates these basic operations.

After breaking in several leather honing wheels, it is no longer a problem. In fact, I have not used the little tube which came with the T8. It is a great idea, but I still have more than enough from the pint of mineral oil I purchased. Unfortunately, most of us do not have the luxury of practicing with several leather honing wheels.

Ken

[Herman Trivilino]

In fact, I have not used the little tube which came with the T8. It is a great idea, but I still have more than enough from the pint of mineral oil I purchased.

Ken, is the oil in that tube a light machine oil, or is it thicker, like mineral oil?

By the way, I apply mineral oil to wooden knife handles.

[Rem]

Herman-dude .....  I'm pretty sure I REMember the tube stating "pharmaceutical grade mineral oil" ..........   but due to my advancing years, I can't be sure.    So this wasn't much good to you.   Sorry.   R

[Hatchcanyon]

I use Ballistol for the leather wheel.

Ballistol is an venerable product made from Medicinal liquid paraffin only. In the past it was "Kaiser Bills Weapon Oil", today it is mostly used for tools to prevent rust. It is not the cheapest one but very dependable.
The name comes from "ballistic oil". It should not be used on brass or copper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistol - http://www.ballistol.de/1-1-Startpage.html

If one got a Herpes blister on a lip this oil will stop it within a short time (But they are not allowed to recommend it for medical use.)

Rolf

[Ken S]

Herman,

The Tormek oil is thicker, like mineral oil. Actually, it is high grade mineral oil. I have heard it is even safe to eat, although I would not recommend that.

The Tormek tube is 20ml (approximately half an ounce). I did not measure how much I used, although there is still oil in the tube. I put small amounts on the leather honing wheel, hand turning it and working the oil around until I had the leather the color of light walnut. Adding some Tormek Honing Compound and polishing a small telephone man's blue knife turned the leather wheel almost as black as my oldest leather wheel, with the same feel.

Work slowly, using only enough oil to just darken the leather wheel. As WolfY wrote, you can always add more.

I used 3in1 light oil on one of my leather honing wheels. It worked fine. I think I prefer mineral oil on wooden knife handles and 3in1 on tools to prevent rust.

Ken

[pnwPat]

I can now contribute some additional info to the "perpetual" honing/stropping wheel maintenance question.

Per my earlier post, the leather on my honing wheel had acquired an excess of paste and oil that made honing difficult – to the point where the grit in the Tormek compound was probably mostly rolling and doing little cutting.

With the goal of correcting this (without buying a new honing wheel if possible), I started by scraping off the surface gunk with the wheel mounted and operating. I initially used as a scraper one of those semi-rectangular flexible plastic trowels typically used to apply Bondo. This got a fair bit off but left something to be desired. The edge of the plastic quickly wore down, and with any pressure the bead or ribbon of oil/gunk that was forming on the edge would get rolled back off and either re-absorbed in the leather or re-distributed on the wheel. I switched to a steel cabinet scraper (dull, with no "hook") which did much better, but I still had to frequently wipe it off to make progress. It worked best to hold the scraper almost perpendicular, tilting it about 5 or 10 degrees in the plane of the wheel (think of that tilt as a negative rake angle). This kept the scraper from "grabbing" or gouging the rotating leather while also minimizing the risk of lifting the leather at the lapped splice where the strip is joined. It also helped to slant the scraper maybe 20 degrees left or right to sort of funnel the remaining oil to and off the side of the wheel. Light pressure is not effective. I was able to use moderate pressure with reasonable success and no damage occurring, but decided not to try heavy pressure. 

Overall I removed maybe an ounce (~30 ml) of oil/sludge by scraping. I could have stopped there and had a functioning hone, and this is what I would recommend for others with the same problem. But I didn't stop, and that's why I can offer a bit more info here for the benefit of anyone interested.

Basically I decided to see if I could get all (or as much as possible) of the oil out of the leather, and then start over with something closer to the factory recommended amount of "pre-charge" oil (not sure exactly what the ideal is, but the amount of oil currently provided with newly purchased machines is reportedly about 3/4 oz, so I planned to start small and creep up with that as a limit).

For "de-oiling", earlier posts on this forum had various suggestions in addition to scraping, including: burying the wheel in sawdust; wrapping the leather in an old T-shirt or rag; using solvent; washing with soap and a brush; or running it through a dishwasher.

I was uncertain about using sawdust (could be difficult to clean afterwards) or solvent, so ruled them out.

I first tried wrapping a rag around the wheel, dismounted. This may have worked better with a band clamp, and regular changes of the rag, and giving it more time, but I just did a simple wrap and rolled the wheel about on my workbench with downward pressure. The rag soaked up some oil, evidenced by stains, but not very much. I moved on to washing with soap and a brush, under water. This got the surface film off,  but I did not think it was really effective in getting out the deeper oil. Finally, since at least one brave worker previously reported success with a dishwasher, I decided to try that. I also included the larger ring from the LA-120 Profile Hone (which was saturated with oil too) in that dishwasher cycle.

Before you ask, yes, I did have to get approval from the distaff side, but be aware our dishwasher is 12 years old. It still functions fine, but from her perspective any problem resulting from this experiment would mean replacing the dishwasher with a new one, a not altogether disagreeable prospect for her. I was willing to risk it, but your mileage may vary !

I can't say the dishwasher was a terrific success, but it was not a total failure either. What happened is that:

•   The dishwasher itself survived fine, no residual black sludge or oil, so dodged that bullet!

For the standard honing wheel:

•   The oil was pretty much gone. The leather was still black, but whatever residual oil remained was small enough that there was no suppleness left. Restating this another way, after drying for a full day the washed leather became nearly rock hard!
•   The glue bond holding the leather on the wheel survived - no leather appeared lifted from the wheel (although see below)
•   The dried leather ended up with raised humps at the edges all around the circumference – i.e. laying a straightedge across the width of the wheel, the center appeared dished, all the way around, by maybe 1 mm. The width of these "humps" was maybe 3 to 4 mm. Not sure why this effect appeared, perhaps the glue was starting to let go at the edges. Perhaps it was due to my initial scraping technique. Regardless, only limited additional work was needed to fix these bumps.
•   The overall dried leather surface was very rough – similar to the surface roughness of perhaps 40 grit sandpaper, but of course without sandpaper's durability.

For the profile honing ring:

•   Failed! Unfortunately the leather forming this ring was laminated from two layers glued together. The glue did not survive the dishwasher – the ring fully separated.  Re-gluing the warped pieces together again after drying did not look promising, so I ended up buying a replacement set of rings (part LA-122). Lesson learned. Brief water exposure is probably OK but long exposure of LA-120 profile hones to water is a bad idea!

Post dishwasher (once the standard honing wheel was fully dry):

I used sandpaper (starting at 60 and progressing to 120 grit) to smooth off the roughness and flatten the worst of the raised edges. Halfway through it occurred to me this was probably a bad idea – bits of grit from the sandpaper could break off and embed in the leather, compromising later fine honing. So I switched to a cabinet scraper with a sharpened hook to finish the job. This scraper worked surprisingly well to flatten the hardened leather without digging in or removing excess material. I lost perhaps 10 to 15 thousandths of the leather thickness, but there is still plenty left. I suspect I also removed any sandpaper grit that may have been left, as later on I didn't see any scratches that would indicate otherwise.

After scraping I had a flat and relatively smooth, but still very hard leather hone. I started adding clean mineral oil to "pre-charge" and also to soften the leather, but no more than absolutely necessary. The hard black surface did not absorb oil quickly so I applied it in small increments, 1 to 2 ml at a time, spreading that evenly around the wheel with a finger, rubbing it in a bit then just letting it sit for an hour or so. I repeated this just until I could leave a fingernail impression without using a lot of pressure. In total I applied about 10 ml (1/3 oz) of oil before that point was reached. This may or may not be a useful comparative benchmark against a new wheel, due to the different conditions of each, but at least the amount I needed for my wheel is documented here. After the final application of oil was fully absorbed I applied a thin uniform coat of honing compound. This was worked in by polishing the back of a 1" wide bench chisel (any flat surface would do) using very hard pressure. This also served to massage and soften the leather a bit.
 
No doubt the leather will soften up further with both regular working and applications of compound, but for now my "processed" hone is still much harder/stiffer than the original leather. I think it behaves more like a relatively soft wood hone, rather than leather, at the moment. This may be advantageous in some ways – but I need to do more observing and sharpening of various tools before deciding. Anyway, for me it will always be a subjective comparison since I don't have  measurement tools to objectively quantify the precise sharpness achieved after honing, nor at this point do I have a "standard" hone to compare against my "processed" hone. But FWIW I think "as is" it can produce equivalently sharp edges in maybe half to a third of the time I had been spending per edge back when the hone was over oiled, so I don't see any immediate need to replace this hone.

Bottom line, would I recommend washing an over-oiled hone/stropping wheel? Not at all, at least not unless something down the road convinces me that a harder hone is really superior, but even then I can't see a big consumer rush on this. If beneficial Tormek should just develop and market a hard honing wheel, maybe as an option, to supplement their standard offering.

What I would recommend without hesitation is that someone with excess oil in their otherwise fine Tormek honing wheel should try removing the excess using only a stiff scraper. Once the majority of the oil has been removed, continue normal honing, add no additional oil, just add compound when needed.

Of course, if feeling flush a quick (or lazy) solution is to buy a replacement honing wheel – but (at least for hobbyists) where's the fun in that ?

Pat

[Giokosmik]

Hello everybody. I just got a T8 used with an extra Japanese wheel almost new. Both wheels needed truing which I did but I noticed that the leather wheel was black and sticky from the previous owner. Research brought me to this thread which contains a healthy amount of information. Reading the last input from pnwPat I decided to try an easier way and it seems it works a treat so here it is.
I used brake and clutch cleaner which is a highly volatile liquid in a spraying canister that evaporates quite quickly and dissolves oils brilliantly. So I sprayed the wheel as it revolved and scraped the black dirt and oil with a stiff painting knife. A few cycles this way left my wheel almost in its original color within a matter of a few minutes with no stiffness at all.
I hope this will be helpful. <

[baburao]

Somewhere else I posted that my guidance booklet suggested that I utilize 14mL of light oil on another calfskin wheel (T7). I don't remember a suggestion in the booklet for extra oil to restore the calfskin. My calfskin wheel gets rare use along these lines, probably, the oil dissipates and abandons a concentrate of glue, spent crushing particles, and steel burr. It is dark. Anyway, how would I revive (restore) the calfskin?

[micha]

I tried the brake cleaner method from Giokosmik's post, to get the leather clean again. (Thanks for the great tip, btw.)
It really worked like a charm. Some coarse sandpaper restored a good surface.
Like Hatchcanyon, I also use Ballistol on the leather wheel, which is a very light oil and there is no issue with toxic ingredients, despite its intense scent.

Being dark is not a problem with leather wheels or strops, but a greasy layer from oil and depositions shows that too much oil has been used.
Now I started with less oil than the very first time.