Ahconite AM HONE CO. OLEAN. NY

[Daniel Shnitka]

I was in an old second hand store, no I'll correct that first statement. I was in a junk store and i am being kind. While spending time trading wood working stories with the new but aging owner and his equally long life experienced helper I came across a honing stone. Once I got home I did a search and found some info on the company but nothing specific about the sharpening stone. It mesures five and half inches long, two inches wide and half an inch thick. It is clearly two sided. One side is gray/green/black the other side appears to be molded to the irregular base of the dark stone. The "working" side of the stone is definetly more towards ths dark side than the gray. However under a 30 power magnification the color seems more brown.
What do I have here?. My guess is a razor sharpening stone. But what is the the classifcation of the business part of the stone. Would I be so fortunate to have an Arkanasas or similar quality product? Perhaps the raw material came from Belgium? I am open to anyones input.

[David Weaver]

I think the american hone company is the same company that made the frictionite hones (which sell for huge dollars). The ahconite looks like it is a 2 sided hone, presumably man made, that is probably not as fine as the frictionite hone. The size is dead on for a typical barber hone.

Looking it up on a razor forum, someone estimated the coarse side at 1k and the fine side at 5-7k.

A lot of the old hones (frictionites, etc) had a color that looked like a brown washita or a coticule, but as far as I know, they were entirely man made materials. If they were coticules, they would sell for a lot more than what I saw, and the coarse side would likely be a belgian blue (much finer than 1k) and the fine side would've been likely listed as around 8k or so.

If the binder on that stone is hard, the surface can be worn on the fine side to make it cut finer than the grit rating. If you got it for a song, I'd consider it a good buy, especially if it has crisp corners on it.

If you want to know more about it, you might want to register on badger and blade or straight razor place and ask about it, and put up a picture. Chances are that someone there will have one in their collection and be familiar with how it works.