About cleaning slip stones..

I have a way of cleaning stones that no one ever thinks of and it works way to well.... makes old stones look brand new...... No solvents.... no oils.... no kerosene......

Hot water, windex and a magic eraser......
I know it sounds crazy but just try it..... this will make black stones orange again....
 
Cooter Brown said:
I have a way of cleaning stones that no one ever thinks of and it works way to well.... makes old stones look brand new...... No solvents.... no oils.... no kerosene......

Hot water, windex and a magic eraser......
I know it sounds crazy but just try it..... this will make black stones orange again....
Click to expand...
Thanks for the tip.
OK .. "windex" is an ammonia-free branded window cleaner. I am not sure it's marketed in UK. I would be likely to try just about any window cleaner to hand, and I do have a plasticky-type eraser. Does windex smell at all of alcohols, or maybe vinegar?

[EDIT: OK, I got it. 1933 windex added vinegar, and lemon juice. 1969 windex had ammonia. 2006 windex is a mix of alcohols and surfactants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windex I am going to have a go with what I can find in the house. Yeah - OK, I admit it. The lady of the house is the one well into cleaning windows!]
 
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Ianagos said:
Well when I have some free time I’ll try to make a set or maybe just order a set up. A bit pricey in my opinion so I may just make them.

I’m a firm believer that a surface could be much flatter by lapping than a surface grinder could produce. With a few stages of cast iron laps loaded with diamond I think you could get the stone pretty flat. But I’d start with a surface ground stone unless I had a lot of time.

Remember things like optical flats are lapped not ground.
Click to expand...
@Bob Korves is right about the time taken, and if you have a surface grinder, the obvious thing to do is to use it. I might suggest first putting a layer of that supermarket 35um aluminum foil over the mag chuck. The foil is regular to within microns, and I would expect the magnets to work right through it.

For my tip, I have brought a flea market Norton India back to flat using a piece of old broken mirror plate glass. The stone had been dished badly from sharpening woodwork chisels. A piece of melamine board under the glass was flat enough to be OK to support it. I used 80-grit abrasive with water plus a little dash of washing-up liquid. There are only two surfaces that can slide over each other. A plane, or a sphere. I suspect that I was making a large radius sphere, but once I had roughed it to "contact, I moved to a fresh part of the glass, and I changed the grit to #120. You can tell when it goes "flat".

The end product, being a bit ghetto, may not be be up to surface grinder standard, but it looks flat, and I can't see light through under a straight edge put against it.
 
The precision flat stones that I have made on my old B&S 2L surface grinder, when clean and dry and held up toward a light with the cutting face almost parallel with the line of sight, show a beautiful reflection of the light, mirror quality.
 
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