Bleach in stone water.

I finally have an official sharpening station and a place to store stones dry as well as soaking. Does anyone use bleach in the water for their perma soakers, or if not bleach, how do you keep the water from going bad?

 

I use a between 2 tsp to a tablespoon of bleach depends on the amount of water and change it every 3-4 months.

 

I use 20-30 ish % alcohol and have no bacterial growth. Much nicer to use than bleach.

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Bleach here, works well for stones, but you can't drink it unlike 20-30% alcohol....

 

i'm waiting for someone to misunderstand this and start soaking their stones in jack daniels or something like that

 

I may love some of my knives, but would never sacrifice good drinking alcohol for them. Especially a solution of 20-30% alcohol (40-60 proof).

 

How often do you change out your water?

 

If you keep the lid on preventing the alcohol from evaporating then you don't need to change it. In theory you can't totally prevent that. Especially if you own the box to take out the stone(s) a lot. With only pure water it takes about 4-5 days for black colonies of bacteria to begin giving out a sulphurous smell.

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This is an odd topic for me. Everything I've read on it is the exact opposite from my experience.
I've always left my perma soakers in water alone and never had an issue. When I first read on this topic regarding the addition of bleach I thought "that makes sense". So I threw in a small splash of bleach. The next day every stone was covered with this dark bacteria. I was furious. And this discoloration ran deep, not just surface area. It took me a bit of time to remove it. A couple stones are still slightly discolored along the sides.

So I switched back to simple water. I'll change the water maybe 2 or 3 times a year for my large container holding 6 stones. The one at work gets changed often because I use the soaking water to rinse the stones during and after use. Haven't had problems since.

 

I permasoak my stones vertically in a large Rubbermaid cereal container for easy storage. I add about 3 tsp of bleach to the water and the container gets sealed when the stone aren't in use. I change the water every 3-4 months. This has does the trick for me preventing weird bacteria or mold growth