[mkl]

I made a discovery yesterday and a quick search does not show a mention of how to easily clean those ceramic rods used in various brands of knife sharpeners.

The instructions say to use a "kitchen cleaner" such as Ajax, Comet, etc. Well, I've done that for years and found you have to scrub like the dickens to even make a start at getting the steel off the ceramic rod.

Decided to try something new yesterday, and lo and behold, the ceramic rods came back to "as new" condition with about 45 seconds of scrubbing.

The magic cleaner is CAMEO aluminum and stainless steel cleaner, available in any grocery store. It has some kind of chemical action that removes all the steel you have deposited on the ceramic rod in under a minute of scrubbing.

I dampened one of those green 3M scrub pads, sprinkled on some CAMEO, and rubbed back and forth on the ceramic rod for about 45 seconds. Durn thing came out looking just like new.

Thought I'd pass my discovery on. Perhaps it's old news, but it was a very pleasant discovery to me.

[7X57chilmau]

I've always used a stiff toothbrush and toothpaste to good effect....

J

[wuluf]

I use an Art Gum eraser. Rub the eraser up and down the stick, then a soft cloth to remove the eraser bits. The steel bits come right off with the rubber.