Featured A cool find today and a few Q's - Honing Stone

Needed to hone some blades today and remembered I had my Dad's honing stone. Never really looked under the cover before but noticed the carving - how cool is this? In 1934 he was 9. Damn have times changed - you give a 9 year old today a knife and a honing stone you are going to jail!!!!!!!!!!
Anybody know anything about honing stones? Are they always good to go or do you need to clean off the old layers of oils??????

 

Plenty on line for whetstone maintenance.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=whetstone+maintenance

 

AHHHH, "WHETSTONE" - couldn't remember that! THANKS!!

Did you check out the last picture with the carvings in the top? That's amazing to me.......

 

Not needing to work on a whetstone, I did not delve into the search results. Not sure which one you mean. Is it a video or photo? I used to love the smell of the oil on my dad's whetstone, which lived in a wooden box & was probably one of the things he had owned the longest among the items at his workbench.

 

Oh no, I meant my last picture in the post with My Dad's last name and the date (I presume) it was given to him carved into the underneath of the top......

 

When I first looked at your post, the pix were blocked.

It's similar to my dad's, but my dad's was probably from the 40s & box, a light colored wood, was still immaculate by the time I was old enough to pay attention & ever after. He did precision work & was very, very careful with his tools. He apprenticed in making artificial limbs when they were wood & leather, then moved to GM as a model maker. After he died I found a box of mementos from his youth that I had never seen. Woodworking seems to have been his best subject.

 

Yeah - I hate "mementos" - that's when you realize they are really gone from your life!

 

From the pics it looks like you have an arkansas stone there - it can be cleaned up with odorless paint thinner and back when I used one of these regularly old timers said they could be gently heated to get rid of the old clogged oil.

 

My father didn't talk about himself unless you asked him directly & then you wouldn't get much unless you kept probing. I would have loved to see these things - some report cards, a letter, in verse, from his grandmother telling him now that he was moving on to high school, he would need to work harder in other subjects besides woodworking, a couple of children's books, a baseball, a mortarboard tassel - when I was a kid myself. I had no idea of their existence. After he died, I learned things about him I never knew from older family members. As I said, you had to ask directly, & who would ever think to ask, Dad, when you were a kid, could you pick up bees without being stung? An enigma in a mystery.

 

I am so thrilled to have a couple of items my Dad carved....since my brothers seemed to wind up with much of his things.....but I got the cat head....the glass eyes he inset follow you around the room!! And a fireplace poker that I don't actually use as I wouldn't want to burn it...but he carved the fish on the handle.... they'll get passed along to the younger ones....he was a man of many talents....so, yeah, I'd treasure it Rayo56, especially since he was probably only 9 when he did it!!!! NICE!!!

 

I have my Dads stone.....& a lot of his tools..

 

No they're not....they're always with you.....in one way or another!!

 

Well in memories and pictures, yes. But nothing can beat the face to face. My Dad and I would shoot the shit for hours on his back porch...... gonna be 2 years this June 28th, hard to believe.........

 

I'm so sorry Rayo, it really doesn't get easier, I find.....it just settles in, along with the comfort that we can always talk to them....just hurts that they can't .... to us....