The goofy stones thread.... [Archive] - Sawmill Creek Woodworking Community

David Weaver

12-12-2012, 5:32 PM

So, to start it off, this is a big charnley forest hone. They come in all sizes, often narrow, and most often with red streaks among the green. There are other types, though, like this one, where the stone is just a drab green.

Charnley forest hones are a type of novaculite hone (true arkansas stones are novaculite, but the charnley hone is quite a bit softer - still harder than almost all synthetic hones now, though) from the UK. They come in varying levels of fineness, but all that I've ever seen are fairly fine to extremely fine.

This one is exceedingly fine, broken in, it will match any or nearly any synthetic hone (it will improve the edge off of any of the synthetics that I have) .

These were used by craftsmen on tools. It must've been murder to try to keep a tool fresh with a stone this fine, or even one a little less fine. In the Holtzapffel ornamental turning book, other coarser stones are mentioned (like sandstone, etc), so craftsmen may have had other stones and mabye some did not.

The history shows that the washita types (like the old washitas that norton and pike sold) took over because they cut so much faster than the hone slates and charnleys that a lot of the craftsmen had to use.

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Jason Coen

12-12-2012, 6:08 PM

Neat thread idea. I love stuff like this that shows the various stops and starts and paths that got us to where we are now.

Matthew N. Masail

12-12-2012, 6:57 PM

Just wanted to say I love the lesson and I think this is will be a "sticky" at the end

David Weaver

12-12-2012, 8:52 PM

A couple more. These are out of my sold pile, there's nothing special or historical about these two, just good examples of inexpensive hones.

On the left is one of the inexpensive japanese stones that LV sold a while ago. In the world of japanese stones, there's no free lunch. These were about $45 each at the time, and that's probably fair. This one is what I would call a prefinisher in razors. You would put a razor on this one before moving onto a finisher. The reason it was in that collection of unsold hones from imanishi is because it has uneven abrasive and it's fairly soft. A skilled user can make use of it, though, and at the time, I sold it to a razor user with the chinese hone next to it because the chinese hone is super fine if used properly, it will make a polished bevel.

Uneven color isn't necessarily bad with japanese stones, but stones like this coloration are common and it would be worth slightly more if it was all green, and a lot more if it was all yellowish. LV didn't slight anyone with these stones, let me be clear about that. But anyone thinking they might chance into a $500 stone with a $50 stone would find out otherwise. I bought one, and a friend bought two, and he wasn't too happy with them. Out of guilt (his two were different than this one), I bought those from him and gave them away when I sold bigger stones. This was definitely the best of the three and a decent stone for $50 for all but someone who was already skilled in using hard natural stones to their greatest potential. The miners and stone dealers in japan know these stones as soon as they come out of the mine, the good ones (the ones that are going to go for hundreds or thousands of dollars) are pulled by the miners and graded right at the mine. The finest stones generally will go to razor use, and below that, the finest tool stones will be marked and sold for high dollars.

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The stone on the right is a guangxi stone from china. Actually, it came to me through woodcraft because I asked questions about it. Let me say that I got this stone, I thought it was not useful to woodworkers. and perhaps it isn't the best stone for a non-fanatic to use, but in the right hands it is an extremely capable stone and in the right razor user's hands, it is capable of doing a superb job creating an edge that surpasses any synthetic hone I've used. It was so slow on A2 that I told woodcraft I thought it wasn't as fine as they suggested and it was slow. I didn't know at the time how to use various types of slurry on a stone to work the edge until it's ready for clear water. Maybe we can talk about that some other time. Suffice it to say, stones like this type can be very useful because of how hard they are. They are capable of putting a 5000 grit type of hazy edge on something, or polishing way up to a bright polish with an edge that is superior to synthetic stones (the trouble is it takes a lot of time to get them, and other than maybe for carving tools, I don't think it's worth it to me to use any stone that has me in the act of sharpening for more than a minute).

These guangxi hones have all kinds of pet names on the razor boards. They vex beginners and advanced honers love them. They are used in china, too, and probably have been for a very long time. I don't know what woodcraft gets these for, but i'm going to guess it's next to nothing, because you can find big ones on ebay sometimes for $20. Of all of the ones I've had, though (i've had three of these guangxi hones), this one was by far the best, and the $44 that WC gets for it to me is well worth it. I felt guilty selling it, but I almost gave it away to a guy who was new to the hobby in razors and told him to call corporate woodcraft and thank them for the deal. I wish I had it back.

Tim Zowada (a bladesmith) took some pictures with different stones. You can see the "chinese 12k" picture which would've been done with no slurry, just clear water on the stone, and compare it to the norton picture in the bottom right.

http://www.tzknives.com/razoredges.html

george wilson

12-12-2012, 8:59 PM

The Spyderco UIF edge looks very similar to the Chinese 12K edge. Is that correct?

David Weaver

12-12-2012, 9:12 PM

Back to the good stuff. This stone is courtesy of George. We've done some horse trading, I guess, never organized, but I've ended up with this stone, and it is a special one.

Coticules come from continental europe, belgium in most cases, I think. Some may have come from germany and france. What they are, like this one, is a vintage stone that was harvested right along a vein where the yellow coticule side of the stone was naturally right up against what is referred to as belgian blue. Both the yellow and the black ("blue") side are abrasive. The abrasive in the yellow side is much more dense, and the particles are smaller. Until recently due to creative marketing, most of the razor community doesn't have any evidence the blue side was ever considered anything other than a good backing for the yellow because the yellow by itself is not strong.

What's in these stones is garnets, and they are roundish in shape. They are super popular for razors because the roundish shape of the abrasives, even though the particles are large, will put a comfortable edge on a razor, which generally equates to shallow grooves and no persistent wire edge. Synthetic stones make for an uncomfortable edge.

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This stone comes from deep strata in a mine, which is where most of the vintage desirable coticules came from (i'm just parroting what I've been told). It is extremely abrasive feeling when you use it, but imparts a surprisingly gentle edge despite it sounding like it's sanding whatever's being sharpened. With a light touch, it can finish a razor. The fact that it still has its label is super cool given that it's a vintage stone.

The line is very defined between the coticule and the belgian blue.

Here is another that I just shipped off to someone. This one is from a different vein and is current mine material. It's from a vein called LaGrise, mined by a company still in business called Ardennes Coticule. It is also a natural combination hone, mined along a blue yellow line, but the lagrise vein is much different. I don't think they named the veins until recently, so where the Deep Rock coticule above came from would be subject to speculation. There were a lot of mines in business at one point when craftsmen and barbers were using the stones and there was a demand for them. Ardennes is all that's left, and I don't think they work full time. A large coticule is an expensive stone, and frankly, most of the large stones being mined are not impressive as a finishing stone. This particular lagrise cost $225, and is 8x2. As a used stone, this fairly large stone is worth about $150. The branded Deep Rock coticule about the same, despite the fact that it's only 5 inches long.

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Craftsmen in continental europe used these stones, some still do. I personally don't favor them for tools at all, though. You can disregard them unless you find them for cheap at a flea market, and then you can take something cheap at a flea market and sell it on ebay if you're a woodworker. Their virtue comes when you can use super light pressure honing something like a razor and not have the abrasives digging in full depth. Great for razors, not so great for tools. With tools, you'll just end up with an expensive stone and a tool that's not as keen as you'd.

AT one point, I said I would never own a coticule. So much for that. I have another that is vintage like George's but super fine and large (10x2). It cost me a mint, but in combination with the Deep Rock above, a razor edge that is like a barber's dream can be made. Very sharp, brightly polished, but on your face, it's smooth and never feels a threat to razor burn you. Cuts hair easily, but not skin.

David Weaver

12-12-2012, 9:14 PM

The Spyderco UIF edge looks very similar to the Chinese 12K edge. Is that correct?

Yep, a spyderco that has been allowed to settle in without being scuffed becomes very glassed over and very fine. Great stone for a skilled user who doesn't mind lifting a tool handle a little to work only the very edge. It can work finer than any other synthetic hone I've seen if used right, easily severing a hanging hair laid on a 25 degree chisel edge.

David Weaver

12-12-2012, 9:41 PM

These are all finish stones. I've since sold all of them because I have better.

The one on the left is a stone that's current mine production from Germany. It's claimed to be a thuringian (named after a region in germany), and is black and as far as decent hone slates go, fairly coarse....like a 4000 grit stone. They market it as 8k, but unless you get it from an unscrupulous seller, it's cheap (like $20-$40 cheap for one 8x3). There are thuringian stones that are superb, but they are not for woodworking.

The one on the right, despite the washout from the camera flash, is a vivid purple slate from Wales. There were a lot of hone slates mined in wales, and a lot of novaculite stones from parts of the UK, like the charnley above, and other novaculite types that are harder and brighter green. This purple stone is referred to as a llyn melynllyn (i probably butchered that). It's a very fine stone, and pretty hard. It's capable for carving tools, woodworking tool finishing and razors. All in all, if they were marketed over here, an interesting stone to screw around with. To me, they are the equal of any arkansas finishing stone, but just a touch less hard. They have more aggressive and smaller abrasive in them.

Still, at that, they're a curiosity for woodworking. The German black slate hone can be avoided too, it's not as good as the purple slate.

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Both have slurry stones. The idea behind a slurry stone is that if you have something hard, like a hard slate, or a hard japanese stone, to get it to cut faster, sometimes you need to introduce a slurry (mix of water and stone particles) on the surface of the stone. A loose slurry cuts fast, but it's also a lot less fine. The truth of nearly all of these natural stones, the japanese stones included, is that the particles really aren't that small. The purple slate on the right probably has 4 or 5 micron particles, the finest japanese stones probably 3 or 4, and the coticules might be 10 microns or bigger. The virtue of the stones is that if they are hard enough to hold their abrasives, the abrasives will dull and cut a shallower groove, and if you have the skill and the patience, you can create a super edge from one of these stones. For woodworking, it's a waste of time (to me). But as a razor honing techique, it's extremely useful. You might only hone a razor once every 50 shaves, so spending 5 minutes every two months is no big deal.

The tradeoff is that once you go to water only and have no slurry on a surface, a stone will cut slowly. It will also almost refuse to cut some some harder and tougher steels. You would be surprised, if you have a stone like an arkansas stone that is reputed to not cut A2 or whatever, if you scuff the surface and have a slurry of abrasive particles on it, it will cut fairly well, even on tough alloys. It just runs out of steam pretty quickly, and because the particles are large, if you have to go to slurry, the edge isn't as fine as you'd like.

That said, on a stone that is allowed to settle in, I can, again, make an edge on a razor with a translucent arkansas that surpasses anything with an aggressive synthetic abrasive. It will just take a while and require a very light touch.

Anyway, here's another welsh hone slate. All black, fairly fine. I have no idea what did to the surface, but another shaver is using it now. I just didn't think it was all it promised to be.

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All three of these stones were inexpensive, except to ship them from europe to here. The top two slates are 8x3, and they were $20 and $45 respectively. The bottom one is 6x3, and I think it was probably about $40.

Interesting, but useful only maybe to a carver or a shaver (and there are better things to sharpen carving tools and shaving tools, though these are acceptable).

David Weaver

12-12-2012, 10:02 PM

This is the holy grail (right now) for razors. These are thuringian hones, like the black one above, but they are extremely consistent, super fine and have been mined out since the 1920s as far as I know. Give or take a few years.

From time to time, you can find these in a woodworker's toolbox from yesteryear, usually beat up from sharpening tools. They are a hone slate type, but they are the best hone slate known.

If you're ever at a flea market and you see any of the following:

*escher
*SR Droescher
*Barber's Delight, or
*a pike stone that looks light green like this

But it and sell it to a shaver. These were not inexpensive when they were new, but they were not horribly expensive. A Barber's delight was either $1 or $2, depending on when you got it. A Y/G escher like the long branded escher shown (9x2 inches) would've been maybe up to about $7, which would've been like 2 day's wages at the time.

People didn't have a lot of money back then, so if you weren't well off, and maybe even if you were, you were unlikely to have a stone like any of these. They were sold to barbers, and if you had a straight razor, it was common practice to maintain your straight razor with a barber hone (which is an inexpensive synthetic stone) and a strop, and when you could no longer take the edge, you could take your razor to a barber and pay them to hone it for you.

IF this stone was still full thickness, it could be sold to a shaver for about $1000. Even one 7x1.5 inches would sell for about $600, same with a barber's delight or droescher They have to have their original label to bring that kind of money. But if you're the type who goes to flea markets, keep your eyes open for them. Just watch out for green synthetic carborundum company hones that look similar, they're only worth about $20.

The one pictured has cracks, is only a little more than half thickness (some barber loved it big time) and it still cost the princely sum of $400. They are the closest thing to magic with a straight razor as there is anywhere. They create the sought after smooth edge that cuts hair easily but doesn't irritate skin, and they are easy to use. They are the top of the hone slates, without a doubt, and their price and the fact that they are not as hard as some hard hone slates and definitely not as durable as an oilstone makes them out of line for woodworking.

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The stone to the right of the escher in one of the pictures belongs to someone on this board. It, too, is a spectacular hone to shave off of, it might be a bit on the super keen side compared to a branded escher hone (it's actually harder and makes a sharper edge), but it's a stone any razor user would find no fault with.

It's anybody's guess if these were ever used by professional craftsmen. I would think the answer would be no, as coticules would've been available and I've only seen advertisements marketing these to barbers. They can be found in toolboxes, and from time to time someone will show up on the razor board saying they found one in a discarded tool box at a flea market with tools for $2. I'm sure most craftsmen never saw one.

They can be a lot of different colors. Yellow/Green, Light Green, Blue/Green, Blue/Gray, Grayish or Black.... The fineness tends to vary with the color.

When the deposits got mined out, the company wound down and eventually either sold or the dust from cuttings was sold, as the last hurrah for a follow-on company was taking the cuttings and pressing the dust into stones. Those pressed stones are more rare, but not worth as much. They might be stamped E&CO or something like that, but not with escher.

Zach Dillinger

12-13-2012, 8:52 AM

I've wanted a Charnley Forest for a long time, just to give it a go. I found a quite fine olive green stone, seems pretty soft, the other day, but have no way of knowing if its a Charnley. It is close to a foot long, but only 2" wide. I'll get a pic or two tonight and post it here.

David Weaver

12-13-2012, 9:02 AM

If I can't figure out if it's a charnley, I'll send a picture to a couple of european stone sellers and ask them.

Take a picture close up so I can see the surface. Charnleys will usually show some kind of pores or streaks. In the case of this stone, though you can't see it, it has tiny black pores on the surface.

Jason Coen

12-13-2012, 10:01 AM

This may out me as a wannabe stone aficionado, but I think this thread is fascinating.

Mel Fulks

12-13-2012, 12:55 PM

Jim Koepke

12-13-2012, 1:00 PM

David,

Great thread. I am not sure if the answer is above.

I have a stone with an impression at one end that says "razor hone." If my reading above is correct it should work with water? I recently bought a couple of old razors for a couple of bucks. One of them looks like it can be rehabilitated into a user.

What about flattening a razor hone?

tia,

jtk

David Weaver

12-13-2012, 1:11 PM

You can try wet and dry, but some of those old razor hones are monstrously hard. I'd use a diamond hone, and keep plenty of water around. Presumably, it's a brick red colored thing? Though it really could be any color. They vary in fineness a lot, and could be similar to a 2k grit hone or similar to a 12k grit hone, or anywhere between. If it seems like the ceramic hard kind of stone, you could take your granite plane lap and work it a little bit. Any metal that gets on it will not embed in it because they're usually too hard, you can just rinse off any gick that gets on the stone, but since they are hard, the surface needs to be worked down then to a reasonable grit or the coarse scratch lines in the stone will make it act more coarse than it would with a smooths surface. 400 grit seems to be a good place to stop, though you can go finer with sandpaper to condition the surface.

They can usually be used dry, with water, or with lather. When they were new, they came with instructions to use them most of the time. Their intended use was to work back toward the bevel but presumably not quite get all the way to the edge, because their aggressive scratches carried all the way to the edge would rip up the face of a shaver and pull hairs.

The instructions usually will say that at the first sign of dullness (which in an old razor is often due either to lack of stropping, or bluntness of the edge from wear), to pull a razor across them with light pressure 5 times on each side (so as not to let them work all the way to the edge and put nasty frizzle on the edge).

They are the oldest example of modern waterstones that I've seen (some made in the 1800s), and they're really not a lot different than a lot of modern stones.

Whatever you do, don't use oil on any of them that don't explicitly tell you to.

All that said, use your woodworking stones to rehabilitate the razor, and until you've got a razor bevel you like, tape the spine of the razor with electrical tape to protect the spine. It's easy to put a lot of wear on the spine of a razor, and it's viewed as unfavorable wear. If you or anyone else on here gets to the point that you can't get a razor where you want it to shave comfortably, I'd be glad to do an initial hone as long as you send me something to send the razor back in. I barbicide them before after I hone and strop. It took me a little while, despite the stone fetish, to get a really comfortable and sharp shaving edge on a razor. Their flexibility makes them a little more sensitive to sharpen than woodworking tools. (Yeah, I thought that was mumbo jumbo hocum at first, but unfortunately it's not).

David Weaver

12-13-2012, 1:14 PM

Really interesting stuff ,David .Due to your writing, a while back I got out my yard sale buys from years ago ,and categorized them by scratch patterns on flat steel samples along with the stones I actually use . Starting to understand this subject a little better. My 1200 king stone is about the same grit as some Arkansas stones I have .Decided the other day to sharpen my pocket knife with an Arky. Kept feeling the edge, nothing happening.Finally I decided to try cutting wood with it. It was sharp! Same grit range as the water stone ,but a very different edge to the touch compared to the aggressive edge of that 1200. Don't know how particular you are about what oil you use but I'm using Ballistol because I can thin it with water to exactly the viscosity I want for faster cutting. Emulsified with distilled water it mixes without any errant globs and stays mixed. Still prefer the waterstone.

I'm not too particular about oil. I use WD40 for fine stones, and mineral oil for coarse ones. I've heard of people using ballistol and smiths honing solution (i've never tried either) because they can use them on a natural stone that's not been used with oil and still go back and rinse it off later and use the stone as a waterstone again.

Arkansas edges definitely are different, they respond very well to more careful sharpening, and at the lower grits, much better to a bare leather strop than does a waterstone.

Modern synthetic waterstones are still my favorites, though, despite all of thise foolishness. The next round of stuff I post will be more geared toward woodworking, though I really have a much softer spot for the fine finishers because they can do double duty in the bathroom and the shop.

Jim Koepke

12-13-2012, 1:18 PM

Thanks David.

Presumably, it's a brick red colored thing?

My recollection is that it is kind of a dirty (brownish) brick red.

Currently my beard is growing out, keeps my face warm in what is expected to be a cold winter. Trying to shave off a well grown beard with a disposable razor is an exercise in frustration. Haven't been able to find my straight razor that was bought way back in the 1960s.

jtk

David Weaver

12-15-2012, 2:51 PM

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Pictures of a couple of washita oilstones.

The first is a Woodworker's Delight, I don't really think it's materially different from the pike/norton washita stone. Like that stone, it seems to be different than the soft arkansas and hard arkansas stones that most sellers sell now as newly mined stones. I don't know if they all come from the same place or not, but I don't think there are any current offerings like these. They are fairly coarse on the unworn surfaces but they break in to be a great touch-up stone for chisels. They don't make a polished edge, but they make a sharp edge that responds very well to a bare leather strop.

The clean face on the woodworker's delight was actually on the bottom of the box, I turned it over. It's had little use but the front face is dirty.

If there was an equivalence, it would be like the speed of a 1000 grit waterstone with the finish after stropping of a 3000 grit waterstone, but it's a different kind of edge vs. a waterstone.

I think the woodworker's delight is similar to a pike/norton lilywhite washita, but I have never been able to get one (a pike lilywhite - or rosyred) inexpensively.

The pike #1 is the same type of stone and same fineness as a lilywhite or rosyred washita, but it has some inconsistency in its appearance and density. The inconsistency has no effect on its use.

If you only had one oilstone (and the carbon steel tools to go with it), one of these in 2x6 or 2x8 is a really nice stone to have.

This type of stone knocked out (or almost did) all of the other stones in the UK in the 1800s, because it was fine enough for work but fast enough to be used by itself and much faster than the charnley forest, llyn idwalls and hone slates that were common at the time. You can get a sense of its prevalence increasing in the UK between the Holtzapffel turning books. Even now, the non-branded washita stones bring more in the UK than in the US, despite the fact that they are probably more widespread there.

Anything that's branded as a new washita stone and not coming from norton now is not similar to this, and can be avoided.

These are nice stones, though. One in good shape for $50 or less is nice to have, as long as it's not beat to death. Some of the ones that show up on ebay have a huge dip in them, what looks like almost a quarter of an inch from heavy use.

David Weaver

12-16-2012, 11:31 AM

Frictionite hones (and variants) were made by American Hone Company, and the most popular ones that remain were made for razor hones. They produced All kinds of hones/stones, though. Early on, they were in Olean NY, and produced stuff under their label and stuff under private label for other makers like Dubl Duck (which is a popular vintage premium razor and hone name).

Somewhere mid-century, they moved to Moravia, Iowa.

I don't know what the abrasive is in them, but they claimed it's something that came from rhodesia, and that they folded up shop because it became unavailable.

They are the nicest feeling synthetic hones I have ever used of any type, and George mentioned that they were stocked for the craftsmen at Wmsbg, and that some there are still using them.

Their price makes them esoteric, though. It turns out they are monstrously popular with axe men in australia - in competitions like the stihl timbersports, but that are done at a community level rather than at a professional competitive level. They drive the price of them up super high. As far as their fineness, the underlying abrasives don't seem to be any finer than anything we have now, but the binder for them is super smooth.

If they had never been driven up in price like they have, they would be great stones for chisels and carving tools.

I am generally sticking only to vintage stones and natural stones. This type of stone was made relatively unchanged since somewhere around 1900, they had serious staying power.

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Chris Griggs

12-16-2012, 12:00 PM

This is a really interesting thread Dave. The washitas are of particular interest....I hope to run across one some day. I might use oil stones more if I had one. I've heard that those types of deposits are still plentiful in the current mines (at least in Halls). I wonder if this is true and if so I wonder why no one is producing stones out of the stuff.

David Weaver

12-16-2012, 12:17 PM

Halls probably has a lot of soft stone deposits, but it must not be like the Pike mine deposits in terms of properties.

Joel would know why Norton wouldn't keep extracting the stones, it probably has to do with it being expensive to mine a few stones when the market is limited. I'd presume they open the mine, extract a bunch of material and cut and market the stones until that extraction effort is exhausted.

Mel Fulks

12-16-2012, 12:38 PM

David , On this "feed back" thing you sometimes mention,I can sharpen a dull knife on the 1200 waterstone and tell when it is sharp by the sound. With the washita ,as I posted the other day, I get no signal. Is there any " feed back" with those?

David Weaver

12-16-2012, 12:59 PM

I can't tell anything on a washita, either. I guess you have to go just by feeling for a burr on a chisel, or in the knife's case, repetition with a little lighter pressure at the end, since they're not incredibly fast with light pressure once they're settled in. I wouldn't want to make a huge burr on a knife unless it was damaged.

David Weaver

12-17-2012, 7:52 AM

Who else has some oddball stuff? Turkish oilstones (flaky soft novaculite from crete or somewhere near there), norway rag stones, tam o shanters, hindostan hones, queer creek oilstones, llyn idwal, dragon's tongue slates, .....?

I have a couple of more others and then gobs of synthetics, but I'll leave the synthetics out of it. Well, and some japanese natural stones and comments about them that might be helpful to prevent people from wasting money or overspending.

I know there are some flea market lurkers who've gotten some interesting things, anything interesting is always appreciated.

Tony Zaffuto

12-17-2012, 8:11 PM

Jason Coen

12-17-2012, 8:28 PM

I know where a big Tam O'Shanter is located. Still has the label, though just barely. What's the story on them? I think there's still a Queer Creek stone still in the box, too.

David Weaver

12-17-2012, 8:52 PM

They're from scotland, I don't know what kind of hone they are (like slate, chert, novaculite, or whatever). They're out there in different shades. Somehow, I got a piece of gray in a bag of stones, but it's too small to even play with. The gray piece I have is a fine stone despite the look of a coarse stone at first, the whitish ones were an "it" stone in the razor community for a while. Eschers and and some japanese naturals seem to be the it stones for razors now, though.

If that stone is not too expensive, it's worth buying as a flip. Figure that they are comparable in fineness to very fine oilstones and I think they're hard stones.

With label for any vintage branded stone is far better than without. If you have the label, it's a tamoshanter. If not, people will end up asking "how do you know it's a ___"

But not much else looks like it.

Jason Coen

12-17-2012, 8:56 PM

Thanks. This one is gray-green, maybe 2"x6" or so. $5, I think, maybe $10, but no more than that. Might have to pick it up.

David Weaver

12-17-2012, 9:08 PM

Definitely.

There are others in the scotch progression, but I don't know that much about all of them because I've never seen a big one. The scottish dalmores are a really cool looking stone, but apparently not that fine, and the water of ayr stones are a very fine hone. I could be wrong about their hardness, too, because I've never had a big one to hone a razor, but they must be hard enough to hold their grit or they probably wouldn't be well regarded for razors like they are.

I know so little about them that I don't know if they are just brands of a hone from a mine or what (for example, there are lots of german thuringian hones that are not labeled escher, but they are still thuringian hones, just like eschers)

David Weaver

12-17-2012, 9:30 PM

Dave,

You need to develop a web site with detailed colored photos of identified stones, large enough that the rest of us can compare our "unknowns" to! I've been fortunate enough over the years to have picked up a number of vintage oilstones, with a few having labels for identification. But for every stone with a label, I got 2 or 3 without and can only make a wild guess as to what they are.

The ultimate test, though, happens when you take a tool to the stone to test ability to sharpen.

T.

I have a few that I don't know what they are, but not as many as you do, I'm sure. I don't get out much and see stones in the wild, and if I do, they're often some carborundum company product or a norton stone that was in a machinists shop or a tool and die shop. I think some of those guys use an india stone until they get it plugged, and then just buy another one.

My favorite unknown stone is some yellowish semi-translucent arkansas stone that's hand cut on the back. No clue where it came from, but it's great.That and a brown stone that I thought was natural but turns out to be a muddyish fine arkansas, it's a really cool greasy feeling stone.

Getting good pictures of things close up is hard, and is apparently beyond me. If someone else had a site like that, I'd sure look at it, though.

jeremy j smith

12-17-2012, 11:38 PM

I have a queer creek oil stone with label still attached that I can photo graph for you all. I have a ProScope HR2 that I can use to take very close up images (100x?) of the stone and give you all comparisons to other known stones that I have (for example, norton water stones). I also have a couple tam o shanter hones and coticules that I can do this with as well.

Let me know if you are interested.

Jeremy.

jeremy j smith

12-17-2012, 11:43 PM

Also, the Straight Razor Place wiki has a page with photos of many sharpening stones. They tend to focus on very fine stones, but that is understandable when honing straight razors.

Jeremy.

David Weaver

12-18-2012, 7:31 AM

Jeremy - I'd like to see the pictures of the stones. Especially the tam o shanters. Coticules are always nice to see, too since they're all so different looking.

jeremy j smith

12-18-2012, 9:11 PM

David.

Here are the best pictures I was able to take of my two tam o shanter hones. I photographed them wet to bring out their character.

248353

The top stone is 7.5 x 1.5 x 0.5 (LxWxH). The box lid (not pictured) indicates that it is a tam o shanter hone and matches other examples. The bottom stone is 8 x 2 x 1 (LxWxH) and was sold to me as a tam o shanter stone. A close up of the bottom stone is below. It has the speckled appearance common to tam o shanter hones.

248354

I could not get a good close up image of the top stone. It is much more grey in appearance with a finer and denser speckling.

Jeremy.

David Weaver

12-18-2012, 9:32 PM

Sweet!! those are excellent. What do you think of what they do for a razor compared to any of the standards? How's the edge quality?

jeremy j smith

12-19-2012, 12:50 AM

David.

I purchased the smaller (top) stone at the same time as a select grade coticule from the Superior Shave website about two years ago. I had better luck with the coticule, so I have not worked with the smaller tam o shanter hone much since. The larger (bottom) stone is a recent purchase. I liked its size and thought it would be useful for knives, planer blades, and chisels.

I will use the ProScope HR2 (hand-held usb microscope) on these stones Thursday. I think I have a 50x or 100x lens for it. I suspect the stones will look interesting through it at that magnification.

Jeremy.

Jeremy.

jeremy j smith

12-19-2012, 10:08 PM

I used my usb microscope to take close up images of the tam o shanter stones.

Small Tam o Shanter 50x
248446

Large Tam o Shanter 50x
248447

For comparison, here are close up images of some other commonly available stones.

Norton Crystolon Coarse/Fine 50x
248448 248449

Vintage Norton Lily White Washita 50x
248451

Vintage Norton Hard Arkansas 50x
248450

Vintage Translucent Arkansas 50x
248452

Vintage Coticule 50x
248453

If the images are blurry, I apologize. The stand that comes with the microscope is not the most stable. A better stand would allow me to use the higher magnification lens (200x) and improve the focusing.

Hopefully, you all will find this interesting. I certainly did!

Jeremy.

David Weaver

12-19-2012, 10:13 PM

They are super cool pictures, Jeremy. The tam o shanters look awesome under magnification. I have a digital microscope, I don't know how good of quality it is, but it might be nice to get pictures of the surface of as many of the stones as possible.

jeremy j smith

12-20-2012, 12:18 AM

Yes, the tam o shanter stones are quite distinctive.

I had trouble getting the microscope to focus correctly. If I can adapt a boom stand from a broken microscope my father has, I may be able to get better results. I have found that you do not need high magnification to get good detail if focused correctly.

Jeremy.

David Weaver

12-28-2012, 10:17 AM

Three more stones...

Left - nakayama finishing stone. This one is super hard, and is a low cost stone (about the cost of a synthetic finisher) for various reasons.
* it's modern origin
* it's not straight on one side
* coloration isn't consistent

There may be others. Good stone for a razor, good super finisher for carbon steel. It's hard to get a stone as good as this one for $100 on the first try, though. You're more likely to get junk at that price level, or at least something softer, or as hard but that cuts poorly.

In the middle - an ozuku mine (another natural japanese stone) mid-grit stone. It's probably similar in fineness to an 8k waterstone. A nice stone for woodworking tools, because it's super hard, but coarse enough that it's not slow and can follow any medium waterstone. If it's a little too slow, a nagura slurry speeds it up a lot. Practical for woodworking except for the cost (though stones like this one, which is not fine enough to finish a razor, are not nearly as expensive as razor finishers, which seem to be the most common stones from the ozuku mine.)

There is a lesson to learn for all modern japanese waterstones, there are types that are popular now (like the super hard finer version of the ozukus for razors), but for tools, the japanese mines have been mined of most of the best stones. If a stone is new origin stone, you have to wonder a little why it wasn't mined out when miners were selling the good stones only to the privileged classes. (I guess that's code for saying I think if you're into these stones, they're interesting, but if you're not, you're likely to be out of money and unhappy because they are a little harder to use than synthetic stones).

On the right, my favorite oilstone. I have no idea where it came from, it's not quite translucent, but it's finer than a norton translucent, and the back is hand cut. It's a strong cutter but fine. On the razor boards, others that have stones with this coloration find them a treat. Good luck finding one, though. I chanced on this one on ebay to finish razors, but it's better than any modern oilstone (that I've tried) for tools. 249273249274

Jason Coen

12-28-2012, 11:17 AM

I have to ignore this thread or I'm going to wind up buying a natural Japanese stone. :o

george wilson

12-28-2012, 12:12 PM

Tam o Shanters and Water of Ayre Scottish stones were mostly used by silversmiths for smoothing out silver pieces they were making. I have a few of these "pencil" type 1/4" or 1/2" square stones. I do not think they are made any more.

David Weaver

12-28-2012, 12:18 PM

Yeah, don't do that if you don't have unallocated discretionary dollars. It is mostly fruitless.

Actually, if I were looking at it from a smart money viewpoint and had to have one, I would get one of the ultra hard razor appropriate stones, or perhaps another stone that I'm going to post later (from south africa) as you can get most of your money back from the razor users and they can be had in sizes large enough to use tools, and with nagura of any type, they'll cut things that oilstones won't. They are also the finest and hardest, and you couldn't use one in two lifetimes, so even a decade later, you'll have wasted little.

They also prevent you from getting a natural stone and saying "well, there's nothing better about this stone than my 8000 synthetic stone", which is generally true for most stones that are a step off of high hardness.

David Weaver

12-28-2012, 2:19 PM

The aforementioned hone, new material stones from a guy in south africa. I have no idea what they actually are, like if they were historically used for anything or if this guy just chanced across material that is extremely fine and uniform.

This stone came with a high polish on the surface, so I'm not that sure yet how fine it is, but it's beyond oilstone fine, whatever it is.

I forgot to take a picture of the back, but it has a skin like the japanese stones above, very rust colored. It's sort of a boring looking stone, but it has a great feel.

249307

They are not cheap, but they are a fraction of the cost of a good known-mine japanese natural finisher. This one is so fine that it would have to be slurried to be used for tools.

Razor fanatics prefer stones that have labels, so the guy who finishes these had the label made up to be stuck to the back of the stone or lacquered on if a user desires.

In general, if you have any natural stone and it's possible to get a label, the stone will be worth a lot more with the label.

Jim Koepke

12-28-2012, 8:11 PM

In general, if you have any natural stone and it's possible to get a label, the stone will be worth a lot more with the label.

One of my stones has a paper label. A few have identifying information printed on the stones.

Can't imagine any of these being all that valuable:

249340

jtk

Tony Zaffuto

12-28-2012, 9:08 PM

You're right! Nothing there of any value, so I'll let you pay me, to take the Lily White off your hands!

David Weaver

12-28-2012, 11:01 PM

Yeah, that's one where the label makes it worth about 40 bucks instead of $5

Speaking of washitas, my dad has always (i hope he never reads this board) been terrible about taking care of his tools. He was an avid hunter and when i look at his knives, I have no idea how he gutted animals...brute force, I guess.

So over Christmas, I said "hey, let's get your knives out of the gun cabinet and sharpen one of them". I recalled that he had a coarse carborundum stone and he also had a fine stone that was covered in black that he said was "big but too slow and worthless" (at least that's what he told me when I was little). Figured it was a clogged up carborundum fine stone.

I took a closer look at the end of it, scraped some of the gick off of it, and it is a washita stone..8x2. The exact consistency of a pike/norton stone (label long gone).

Took about 5 minutes and half a can of very old singer sewing machine oil (he also collects old oil cans) and the crud on the surface was transferred to the coarse carborundum stone leaving a fresh washita to sharpen knives. After about 5 more minutes of grinding the nicks out of his best knife (a carbon steel vintage camillus hunting knife - one that he also thought was junk) on the coarse carborundum stone, I finished the knife with 50 razor type strokes freehand on the washita (courtesy again of more singer sewing machine oil) and a quick strop on a smooth junk belt, and I have never seen an edge so fine from a stone as coarse.

Big big fan of the washitas for knives. My dad is now, too. He spent the rest of the evening working over the other knives in his cabinet...freehand, working on his newfound skill.

You never know where an old washita stone will show up. Lucky for him, he grew up very poor and never throws anything away.

Jim Koepke

12-29-2012, 12:06 AM

Yeah, that's one where the label makes it worth about 40 bucks instead of $5

That's nice, doubt if it will be sold before the price goes up 10 fold.

I finished the knife with 50 razor type strokes freehand on the washita (courtesy again of more singer sewing machine oil) and a quick strop on a smooth junk belt, and I have never seen an edge so fine from a stone as coarse.

There is also one that is a brighter white, a bit wider and a bit shorter that came in a leather pouch. They both put a nice surface on a chisel. They still don't match the surface my translucent Arkansas from the rock show leaves. That sucker can come close to the shine my 8000 Norton water stone imparts on an edge. I still regret that I didn't take more money to the show and buy all the novaculite they had. That is one slick piece of stone.

jtk

Tony Zaffuto

12-29-2012, 6:43 AM

When looking at the pictures of the "tam O shanters", I'm not so sure that what I'm calling my user washita is not really one of them (what I'm calling a washita is speckled and looks similar to the pictured stone)! Having not used a "tam O shanter" (or seen one in person) does anyone with experience with one have an opinion of how it compares with a washita?

george wilson

12-29-2012, 8:11 AM

I haven't tried to use my Tam o Shanter pencils to sharpen a tool as they are made for polishing and smoothing down silver. They are a flat,slate color,light gray. They are softer than a Washita.

Tony Zaffuto

12-29-2012, 9:15 AM

I haven't tried to use my Tam o Shanter pencils to sharpen a tool as they are made for polishing and smoothing down silver. They are a flat,slate color,light gray. They are softer than a Washita.

What has me wondering, is the stone I've called a washita is visually similar to the Tam o Shanter pictured by Jeremy Smith. My stone is definitely not a polishing stone, and acts somewhat similar to a medium india, only a tad faster. If I was not so lazy to learn how to post pics, I would do so!

Almost forgot, I also have what you described as a "flat, slate, light gray" stone. Color is very consistent, stone is soft and is of no use for my chisels or plane blades. Only cost me a buck or two and because it was not oil soaked, when I "tested" it, I used a bit of water.

Jonathan McCullough

12-29-2012, 3:12 PM

Here are some of the odd, unusual, or notable natural stones I've come across, including some razor hones since David is including these.

The first picture has mostly straight-razor associated stones. The first three are Belgian Coticules. I find these to be highly variable from stone to stone. The largest chunk on the left creates a slurry rather easily, while the thin long one (second from left) is harder. Although people say you can use oil on a Coticule, it doesn't seem appropriate.

I believe the next two thin gray stones are Thuringians, and I have it on authority from David that this was a common size and shape for these stones for use on razors. They're very fine natural water stones. My theory about thin stones with straight razors is that since you're honing less of the edge at any given time, you're less likely to over-hone the middle of the edge, which leads to a "frowny" and therefore unusable straight razor edge. But maybe David would like to comment on that.

The next two are synthetic barbers' hones. The gray one has the label "SHAVING SHARPNESS" and underneath "MADE OF CARBORUNDUM." Despite this, it is nonetheless fairly fine--about a 1000 grit I'd guess. The brown barber hone is finer and made with what I suspect is a ceramic or resin bond. One the non-business side it is embossed with "VOM CLEFF & CO. / NEW YORK" and has a glassy, slightly "rubber eraser" texture. This one works well with some shaving lather.

The last one is a Norton Queer Creek Stone. This natural stone has a pleasing milky blue gray color. I'd rate the grit at between 600-1000 and I used it successfully for setting the bevel on an old razor. Nice stone, but has some harder knotty areas. I don't know where these were quarried--I don't think it was Arkansas Novaculite deposits--and think these may have fallen out of favor simply because the meaning of the word Queer bifurcated from "strange" or "odd" into having a LGBT context.

http://i575.photobucket.com/albums/ss199/Jonathryn/odd%20razor%20etc%20stones/photo1_zpsb9b95886.jpg

This is the obverse side of the Coticules. The one on the left is all Coticule. The second one has the coarser Belgian slate bonded on, while the third one has the natural seam. You can see the label on the Queer Creek stone. It was hardly used when I found it.

http://i575.photobucket.com/albums/ss199/Jonathryn/odd%20razor%20etc%20stones/photo2_zps73293577.jpg

Jonathan McCullough

12-29-2012, 3:38 PM

Here are some Arkansas stones. Although the first two appear to be soft Arkansas, they are medium-hard and have a lot of color to them. The next two I call "The Sullied Old Maids" because I think they were at one time Lily White Washitas. I sometimes nickname my stones. I've used these although not extensively, and can attest to the observation that they have the unusual, and useful property of being able to cut quickly with a lot of pressure, but also give you a fine, keen edge when you use only a little pressure. This quality is true to some degree of most stones, but is more pronounced with these; if you had to have only one "desert island" wonder stone, this would be a great choice.

The next, small stone is included because it is one of those brulé-creamy, not-quite-translucent novaculites David mentioned. I first encountered a stone like this as a schoolkid in the UK when my shop teacher showed me how to sharpen a chisel, and have seen only this one since. It's a great stone, though too small for much other than paring knives or maybe as a razor hone.

The next one is not unusual for any other reason than that it is excellent. It's a Norton black translucent I've nicknamed "Black Lightning" and is my favorite stone of all time. Like the wheels of justice, it grinds slow but exceedingly fine. More true oddballs after I take the kids sledding.

http://i575.photobucket.com/albums/ss199/Jonathryn/odd%20razor%20etc%20stones/photo3_zpsd16cecd6.jpg

David Weaver

12-29-2012, 4:30 PM

Yes, stones in the 1x5 range are common for a razor. I hate them, but it's because of laziness, I guess. The longer you sharpen with a straight razor, the less it will see the stones, at least if you have a good strop.

I'm going to guess that those small 1x5 stones were made due to cost. 2 1/2 x 5 or 6 inches seems to be about the nicest hand held stone to use that I can think of. I have seen people say before that frowns often come from:
* many years of use on a loaded strop with no correction from stones
* stones that are too narrow and bad technique of the sharpener

A full stroke on any stone should at worst make a straight edge on the razor (a little bit of a smile is desirable, the middle of the razor sees the face the most, anyway).

While I've seen some razors that look almost unusable on ebay, I don't know for sure what actually causes them to be sharpened hollow into a frown, mine are close to straight with the very end muted on the side of a stone.

I haven't seen much on queer creek stones other than that they were a second line stone. I don't know where they come from (I'm sure someone could look it up easily), same as the hindostan hones, which come from somewhere in the US despite an indian sounding name. And not to forget grecian hones, which are novaculite hones from the UK. Not sure why they call them that.

Jim Koepke

12-29-2012, 4:43 PM

While I've seen some razors that look almost unusable on ebay, I don't know for sure what actually causes them to be sharpened hollow into a frown

It likely is caused by a blade being honed back and forth. The middle of the blade has the most contact with the stone in this sharpening motion.

Here is something from downloading a magazine today:

249437

The Tam O' Shanter is just one of the many stones that never came to my attention before this thread.

jtk

Jonathan McCullough

12-29-2012, 5:09 PM

Here are a couple more odd ducks, and slightly larger & longer ones at that. The one on top I call the "Brindle Stone" and is in a wooden box labeled "NYB Co." which my research indicates was the New York Boiler Co. Ever wonder how all the houses in New York got heated in the winter before heating oil? Lots of wood and coal; one could see the necessity of sharpening a lot of axes and possibly other edge tools in such a setting. I've seen a stone like this characterized on ebay as a "Turkey Stone," but my suspicion is that the seller called it that more because it resembles the mottled brown and dark brown of a turkey feather than its ultimate origin. So-called "Turkey Stones" were, according to my research, actually quarried in Crete. They are supposedly gray, often with white veins, and could be used with oil or water. At one time they were held in very high regard by the craftsmen and barbers of Europe. I don't think the "Brindle Stone" is an example of the fabled "Turkey Stone."

David Weaver has seen this stone and supposed it was a soft Arkansas of some variety, and as I started to flatten it, it gave off a sort of fine, sedimentary slurry reminiscent of the silica in Arkansas stones. But it's exceedingly hard; the flattening process was tedious in the extreme, so I got it "mostly there" in hopes of finishing the job later. The surface I was able to grade down is glassy and unusually fine.

The second stone has an oleaginous, slate-y feel to it, like oil shale. If the edges weren't so straight I'd suppose it had been made by just some guy somewhere from a local quarry like some stones you see with unfinished bottoms. Haven't given this one much use yet, and had speculated that it was some chip of slate brought over by a Welshman. David has also seen this one and may have something to say about it. As I recall, he'd thought it was sufficient as an intermediary stone.

http://i575.photobucket.com/albums/ss199/Jonathryn/odd%20razor%20etc%20stones/photo5_zps529a000e.jpg

David Weaver

12-29-2012, 5:11 PM

It likely is caused by a blade being honed back and forth. The middle of the blade has the most contact with the stone in this sharpening motion.

Here is something from downloading a magazine today:

249437

The Tam O' Shanter is just one of the many stones that never came to me attention before this thread.

jtk

Right, but I guess the question is whether or not it's caused by stones too narrow or by the method prescribed in barber texts that has an individual pulling the razor off the edge of the stone. Or if it's from a narrow strop that's loaded with a coarse paste (as the razor makers each have a series of pastes that have progressively finer grit).

One thing is likely true, and that is that most of those razors saw more use than most gentleman shavers these days would give a razor. We have several (to many) and I think a careful user could get a lifetime out of a single 6/8 razor, honing only a couple of times a year with the proper use of a strop and linen.

A hack can wear the spine of a razor heavily in a few honings, though. Hopefully a stone coarser than a finish stone is needed only once and then never again.

David Weaver

12-29-2012, 5:17 PM

Jim Koepke

12-29-2012, 5:18 PM

It may be there are multiple reasons a razor gets more action in the middle. It could be bad strop technique with only the middle of the blade getting the action on the strop. Even with the blade being pulled lightly to expose the full edge to the strop, the middle of the blade sees more contact with the strop.

jtk

george wilson

12-29-2012, 10:34 PM

Jim,your illustration is the first time I've ever seen a Tam O Shanter for knives. All the rest are those little silversmith's pencils(1/4" sq.). Now I've learned something.

jamie shard

12-30-2012, 9:00 AM

The black slate caused me some razorburn! I thought I had a razor sharp enough to shave the back of my neck with...well, it was sharp enough to cut the hair just fine, but the edge was ragged enough to make my neck look like someone raked it with a very fine garden rake...dark red burn that lasted several days. It would be a nice precurser to a finishing slate.

I have a stone that looks very much like the black one. Mine is purplish-black. It's a wierd combination of waxy and gritty. It's gives more of a burnishing polish with deeper scratches in the signature. It sorta works on woodworking tools as a touch-up stone, used with pulling strokes. A push stroke has a tendency to cut into the stone.

Are these black arkansas or some other kind of stone?

David Weaver

12-30-2012, 10:19 AM

They're a different kind of stone. At the risk of butchering what goes on with the stones, they all have some sort of silica based abrasive, but the novaculite stones (arkansas stones, etc) have or may have undergone a chemical reaction that slates haven't. That's as close as I can remember from the razor boards.

There are very hard slates, though, but none that I've used are quite as resistant to a scratch on a push stroke as a black or translucent stone. The one in johns picture (the black one) is fairly soft. The purple one at the beginning of this thread is hard. Though not exactly the same, the ozuku super hard japanese stones are also hard but fall short of black or translucent arkansas and can be scratched though deep gouging on any of the hardest slates or japanese stones would be really hard to do.

Mel Fulks

12-31-2012, 11:19 AM

David, I have made scratch pattern samples for my hones. The BBW is the only one that leaves a mottled ,almost engine turned,surface. Ever noticed anything like that?

David Weaver

12-31-2012, 12:05 PM

Coticules do that and a lot of the looser japanese naturals do it, too. I only have one coticule that doesn't, and it's a coticule that's hard enough that it doesn't release grit.

I don't know if it's a function of abrasive stuff rolling around or what, but it doesn't leave you with a surface that shows any prominent scratches. My guess is that it's loose grit rolling around.

Some of those stones cut finely enough that if used with a lot of water, they can be gentle enough on the edge that a linen can smooth out the edge and still shave comfortably (BBWs are just generally less abrasive dense in and usually with bigger garnet particles, but I know people have shaved off of them).

But the keenest edges are still those with a bright polish off of a stone that doesn't release grit. Though there have been discussions to the contrary in the past here, I'm not aware of any natural stone that will leave a hazy edge that can match the keenness of something like stu's 13k stone (which has a particle grading 0.73 microns and makes a super bright polish) or the shapton 30k (which is finer yet by a little bit). On edges where someone has taken a stone to clear water (if that's an unclear term to those not part of the shaving discussions, it just means no loose abrasive on a stone, just clear water on it and the assumption that it stays that way while shaprening) to approach that kind of sharpness (chinese stones, arkansas stones(oil instead of water), japanese stones), the edge will come up polished.

The BBW stones don't seem to have had a well documented past in razors as anything other than a backing for yellow coticule, but they are a decent prepolisher for natural stones and since the particles are fairly large, if any are loose (and it's likely just using the stone makes for loose ones), they'll give that finish that looks like someone has shot the edge with a thousand tiny shotgun shots. With the kind of pressure that one would use to sharpen tools, coticules don't impress much, especially for the price.

I guess coticules are bizarre in general, because of how finely they can be made to cut with light pressure (if they aren't too soft) despite the fact that the particles are fairly large.

The japanese naturals and the finest hone slates (eschers, etc) probably have the smallest particles of the natural stones, but even they will leave a cloudy surface on a slurry. I have read somewhere that the finest japanese naturals have particles in the 3-4 micron range, which seems accurate. A cloudy edge that isn't at least partially polished will show its lack of keenness if anyone tries to shave with it right off a stone with nothing but a light bare leather stropping. Some of us got caught up believing that in woodworking because you can't tell as easily when an edge is acceptably sharp vs. clean comfortable shave sharp on a hollow ground razor.

So, anyway, you can find that mottled surface when you start getting into softer natural stones that release grit, and it's usually an invitation to improve the edge (might still get a good edge with good vintage plain carbon steel, though).

Mel Fulks

12-31-2012, 12:12 PM

Couldn't ask for better detail than that.Thanks. I like the edge for wood and it cuts fast.

jamie shard

01-03-2013, 6:48 AM

Brian Deakin

01-03-2013, 7:27 AM

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-tqp5_ZhMWV4/TW1dX7vLiVI/AAAAAAAAAsk/mopV54Y92n8/s1600/charly+forest+1.jpg

Brian Deakin

01-03-2013, 7:28 AM

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-xrVkGSAXFw4/TWwRouxeaGI/AAAAAAAAAsQ/R8tsTUm370Q/s1600/charly-forest-2web.jpg

David Weaver

01-03-2013, 9:35 AM

That's awesome stuff Brian. Interesting that the raw material was free or close to it.

For anyone who hasn't seen a clog maker's fixture, there's one about 2:15 into this video:

http://vimeo.com/49031684

Brian Deakin

01-03-2013, 3:29 PM

http://i.ebayimg.com/t/WATCHMAKERS-TOOLS-BOXED-OIL-STONE-22-/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/$(KGrHqFHJC0FCBJ7bUM,BQj(3y7tjw~~60_12.JPG

I purchased this stone on e bay in the United Kingdom for $90 or £56.00

On the box it reads Hard Arkansas oil stone. The box measures approximately 165mm wide x 65mm deep x 40mm high

regards Brian

http://i.ebayimg.com/t/WATCHMAKERS-TOOLS-BOXED-OIL-STONE-22-/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/$T2eC16RHJHIE9nyseGoiBQj(36Qo8w~~60_12.JPGhttp://i.ebayimg.com/t/WATCHMAKERS-TOOLS-BOXED-OIL-STONE-22-/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/$T2eC16FHJGoE9nuQeWioBQj(3-Vldw~~60_12.JPGhttp://i.ebayimg.com/t/WATCHMAKERS-TOOLS-BOXED-OIL-STONE-22-/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/$T2eC16RHJHIE9nyseGoiBQj(36Qo8w~~60_12.JPG

Paul McGee

01-07-2013, 9:19 AM

Hi guys - another Oz dweller.

I replied to a comment on our Ozzie forum here: http://www.woodworkforums.com/f152/they-look-nice-153154/#post1495232

http://www.woodworkforums.com/images/misc/quote_icon.png Originally Posted by chook http://www.woodworkforums.com/images/buttons/viewpost-right.png (http://www.woodworkforums.com/f152/they-look-nice-153154/#post1494818)
Absolutely. You might say "Nice looking chisel." But nobody ever says "What a beautiful oil stone."

And some old info ...

Cheers,
Paul McGee
250359 250360 250361

David Weaver

01-07-2013, 9:39 AM

Love the picture of the rosy red washita!!

David Weaver

09-26-2013, 7:43 AM

Green chinese agate - cut at the same size as the traditional large oilstone (2x8) finisher.

Not much of a fan of it so far. It seems to be a slower version of a translucent oilstone that barely cuts steel at all (more like it burnishes it) and only older vintage steel at that. A 1/4" slab of biggs jasper for 10 bucks is a far better substitute for a finishing oilstone (and in some respects is a better finishing stone than an expensive oilstone) and much cheaper than this stone (which is between the biggs jasper and a good 2x8x1 translucent oilstone in price).

271699

David Weaver

12-17-2013, 9:00 AM

Revised opinion on the green chinese agate - after using it some more and understanding how slow it cuts, I've been able to get sharper edges with it than any other stone that I've ever had (including micron and sub micron synthetics), and it's basicially impenetrable. It does not develop much of a wire edge like a novaculite stone, and it's a nice follow-up stone to something that does make a wire edge. That's with plain steel, though, no clue about alloyed stuff, I've been eliminating anything that's more complex than stanley iron steel from my tool options.

A jasper slab will get close, though, especially if it's just used with water. And is about 5 bucks.

Got another stone in the mail last night, too.

Okudo suita. With japanese stones, you never really know if you're getting a stone that's from the mine the seller says it's from. Same with maruka stamps, there are a lot of accusations of fakes (which in my opinion isn't a big deal to a user if you're buying a stone to use at a cut-rate price - the only way to be sure a stone is a true maruka stone is to get it from the Hatanaka company, and that kind of thing is for rich people).

Wish I would've gotten a better picture. I always wonder what the kanji says on stones like these when I get them. The color is off a little on this stone for what it would be on a valuable stone (a cream color with red renge (the little dots) would be more preferable. BUT, this stone is SUPER fast on even hard chisels, faster than any other fine natural stone that I've ever seen without being soft or scratchy.

277320

The other dilemma with natural stones is for all but the most vintage and choice stones, the stamp adds a fair amount of value. If it says it's Okudo, someone can read that, but once it's gone, nobody has a clue what mountain it came from, and if it's an okudo suita, that means a lot more than if it's a narutaki suita. That also creates the opportunity for stamping, though, and getting an "okudo that suprisingly doesn't cut that fast" (a different mine's stone that's stamped okudo).

I got this one from Aoki (i think that's his name - Aframestokyo - who is at this point, my favorite seller of stones, because his stone prices are good enough that it almost doesn't matter if a miner or wholesaler scams him with stones that are mis-stamped.)

David Weaver

12-17-2013, 11:06 AM

Separate request - if anyone reads Kanjii, and you can see enough of it to let me know if one is a mine stamp and one is a retailer's stamp, I'd be curious to know what they say.

Thanks!

I picked off the picture from the listing online, I don't think the seller will mind given that I bought it.

He also has (few but interesting) blog posts that sometimes talk about knives and sometimes stones. To stay in good graces with the blog policies, I'll just link the picture album for the ohira mines. there are a lot of large good quality ohira and shoubu mine stones around, as well a lot more of what I would refer to as second line stones (hakka, takashima, etc). I've had a couple of ohira and still have a shoubu razor stone, they were all what they're supposed to be. Check out the piles of stones in these pictures. They are not cheap stones, but not exorbitantly expensive like vintage maruka stamp nakayama stones, etc.

http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/24128941

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george wilson

12-17-2013, 12:27 PM

David,you have an incredible knowledge of Japanese stones!! The only one I know of is the ubiquitous "Hono Chiselo".:)

David Weaver

12-17-2013, 12:44 PM

I know enough to get what I expect to get when a dealer is honest about their descriptions, and enough to not get ripped off on fake stamped stones, or buy a stone graded for knives expecting it to sharpen razors, etc. Like every trade, the miners and cutters who grade the stones know very quickly what they are - you're not going to cheat the system as an inexperienced deal searcher.

Or to not buy an overpriced non-kyoto hone from a dealer who tries to pass them off at the same price as kyoto stones (the other-territory stones would be like someone selling arkansas stones mined in florida).

I spent a fair bit of coin getting to this point!!

george wilson

12-17-2013, 12:47 PM

Mel Fulks

12-17-2013, 12:54 PM

Top says: "quality most gooder". Bottom: "using eye storm windows when rubbing "

David Weaver

12-17-2013, 12:58 PM

If I ever want a Japanese stone,I will consult you!!

That green Chinese agate stone sounds worthwhile if it gives the sharpest edges you have attained. Where can I buy one?

What is the POPT convention? I belong to POOT(People out of teens).

Direct from china, george. If the idea of a stone that will need to be used with a handle lifted a little only working the very edge and with some pressure appeals to you (think translucent oilstone except 2-3 times as fine and 1/6th as fast), they are interesting. I misread them at first, but they would be the worst thing in the world to foist on a beginner!!

POTP = "part of the problem", as opposed to part of the solution.

David Weaver

12-17-2013, 1:00 PM

Top says: "quality most gooder". Bottom: "using eye storm windows when rubbing "

Figure sooner or later I'm going to get a stamp that says "american tourist grade, not for actual use".

I had a set of hastily finished japanese chisels that were export market - they were functional in the end, but it's clear the maker knew that in fit and finish, they had to put blingy stuff on them (ebony handles in this case, and multiple hollows) but that the overall finish could be really sloppy and a dumb american buying their first set of japanese chisels would have no clue that a japanese craftsman would be offended by them. Fortunately, I got them for about a third of new price.

Kim Malmberg

12-17-2013, 2:09 PM

David
I have been reading this thread with an sense of increasing interest. Until I noticed you mentioned the stones made by Escher in Thuringen. A light went on in my head. The paper label seemed familiar.

Turns out I found a 1 inch wide Escher stone with the label intact two years ago. It also turns out I gave it away for nothing about a year ago.

The three pictures are all I have of it, so I can't say how thick it as, but I d remember finding it straight and undamaged.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/finnberg68/sets/72157638772009384/

Now I feel sick.

David Weaver

12-17-2013, 2:51 PM

1x5 stones were a common thuringian size, but often the darker ones were sold in england and other places as "the celebrated water hone". The most common size I see for escher company stones something like 1.5x7, and I had one that was 9x2. Maybe I showed it here, I sold it because I didn't have the gumption to glue it to a paddle when I have a million other stones (and that's what it needed to be stable in the long long term).

Yellow/green and light green hones are very desirable with light blue and blue hones next, the darker and gray hones are somewhat less valuable. The bigger they are, the more they're worth to go along with that. The prices and desirability mirror the old price lists (an old 9x2 escher hone when they were new in yellow/green was somewhere around 1-2 days wages, they weren't cheap).

Given the color and small size, it wouldn't have retired you, but it's not inconceivable that with a label that nice, your stone may have been worth $150-$200 to someone.

If it makes you feel any better, someone on the razor boards mentioned a while back that they located a 10 inch long escher stone with little use in a cabinetmaker's tool box. Someone had high hopes for it as a tool stone, I guess. They are much more suited to razors (and pretty much only razors), and even at that, they are not that easy to use when they are 1x5, so it's perfectly excusable to look at it and maybe think "what would someone do with this little sharpening stone", especially after they find it easy to gouge.

Kim Malmberg

12-17-2013, 2:57 PM

Never mind the money. But a stone this good would have been worthwhile keeping. Just sad I wasn't skilled enough to see it's potential.

David Weaver

12-17-2013, 3:07 PM

Did all of the eskilstuna razors make their way out of scandinavia? They would be a very good match to a thuringian hone. Thuri prices are super inflated compared to where they were a few years ago because some of the razor forums push them as the ideal razor stone. that's brought thing slike 2x5 barber hones to $700, and 10-inch hones to prices like $1000-$1500.

They are consistent, but a user here sent me an unlabeled stone that Escher probably would've cast aside for cosmetic reasons, and it was a better stone than my labeled escher by a fairly large margin.

I guess what I'm saying is they are stones that do what they're supposed to do, but they can be outdone by some other natural stones- espec. some of the little hard 6x3 japanese stones that don't have a lot of value for japanese stones because of their short length.

You're right, though, it would've been a good stone to keep until you wanted to use it for something, if you could've tolerated the size, you probably would've liked it.

Kim Malmberg

12-17-2013, 4:22 PM

I must confess I can't say how many razors were shipped out of Scandinavia and how many stayed. But I own one, with a damaged blade and they show up on domestic auction sites as well as in Sweden. So I'd say there are still many around. But they too sell for shiploads of money.

David Weaver

12-17-2013, 5:35 PM

I only looked briefly for eskilstuna razors. There is a premium on them that makes no sense, just as filarmonica's premium makes no sense (especially given people will pay the premium or at least a great % of it on late filarmonica razors that were not made by the same group/cutler and that are not finished as well).

Every eskilstuna origin razor that I've seen that's affordable is totally clapped out with enormous amounts of hone wear. For us in the US, there are so many good local US razors that are as good of steel as just about anything short of the stuff that iwasaki hardens to 67 HRC (which, in my opinion, makes the razor not respond properly to a strop), that there's no reason to ever overpay for a razor in the US. But many do.

There is a huge explosion over the last few years of people seeking somewhat rare stones that were not worth much 15 years ago, and now because of the internet and the white collar purchaser (admittedly, i'm in that category), suddenly value is had.

The big thuringians were about $100 before this craze, despite the legitimate issue that best stuff that the escher company mined is long gone (and caused them to shut down), and the stuff that is sold as newly mined thuri is not remotely close - escher wouldn't have shut and given way to a company literally trying to press the powder from stone cuttings together if there was more material to mine.

Anyway, a lot of razors have gotten into that fad category, and most of the folks buying them are either speculating or don't have much experience shaving.

So, unfortunately, eskilstuna razors are out for me.

Jack Curtis

12-18-2013, 12:37 AM

The other dilemma with natural stones is for all but the most vintage and choice stones, the stamp adds a fair amount of value. If it says it's Okudo, someone can read that, but once it's gone, nobody has a clue what mountain it came from, and if it's an okudo suita, that means a lot more than if it's a narutaki suita. That also creates the opportunity for stamping, though, and getting an "okudo that suprisingly doesn't cut that fast" (a different mine's stone that's stamped okudo).

Why not flip them over for use? I don't know if your stamped stones are rough on the opposite side, but still, may be economically viable to smooth a rough side for use.

David Wong

12-18-2013, 1:03 AM

Brian Deakin

12-18-2013, 6:30 AM

David Weaver

12-18-2013, 7:36 AM

Why not flip them over for use? I don't know if your stamped stones are rough on the opposite side, but still, may be economically viable to smooth a rough side for use.

Unfortunately, most of mine are very rough on the back. I'd assume if a lot of these closed-mine stones are legitimate in terms of their stamps, they are probably cuttings that would have been discarded or set aside due to their irregular shapes and uneven backs.

Because of my personal purchase habits with stones, which is to get irregular stones like this when I can (because they're cheaper), the mine stamp value isn't a big deal for me. It's just another reason that I don't buy the expensive stamped stones, but it's one of many.

David Weaver

12-18-2013, 8:16 AM

My wife says the larger stamp on the stone reads "natural finish sharpening stone" (天然仕上砥石). The smaller stamp is "Ｏkudo-no" (奥殿).

Thanks, David!

I wouldn't imagine Takeshi Aoki would sell anything untoward, and a lot of his stones come from imanishi. It's nice to know what it says on it, though, so I can write it down.

There is an interesting discussion going on with the razor boards (where folks are a lot more focused on getting maruka stamped stones), actually several discussions. Anyway, alex gilmore mentioned that some of the sellers (like imanishi level people, not crooked folks) in japan are going to begin to stamp stones with nakayama stamps since some of the stones (or many?) were never stamped when they came out of the mine.

There is some guesswork in figuring out which stones are nakayama stones vs. hard vein stones from some of the other mines, especially on stones that are more green and have some color variation.

I thought that was somewhat interesting. There is apparently no protection for the mine stone (I guess none was applied for?), but no legitimate seller will put a hatanaka stamp on any of the guess stones - just "nakayama".

David Weaver

12-18-2013, 9:09 AM

Please see link below

http://www.taths.org.uk/special-publications.htm

Natural 19th and Early 20th Century Sharpening Stones and Hones

by Brian Read and Doug Morgan
A joint publication by published by

The Tools and Trades History Society, UK and The Traditional Tools Group (Inc.), Australia

regards Brian

Thanks Brian. I've seen that page before. Do you know if that is a separate original publication, or if it's publication of material in the holtzappfel book? I bought the holtzappfel book, and have wound my way through most of the different hones that were popular in the UK before the washita stone smashed all competitors there. (charnleys, a whole glom of hone slates, etc. The only things I haven't tried in large form are llyn idwall stones and tam o shanters - because the razor community had made the latter a pet stone a little while ago, and they are priced far beyond their capability due to the white collar "it brand" syndrome that happens as soon as something rare is described as wonderful on a forum).

My understanding is the idwall's are novaculite, I'd still like to dig one out of the woodwork at some point.

Brian Deakin

12-19-2013, 4:29 AM

Sorry I do not know the answer to your two questions but you may get an answer if you e mail Taths

Other
I live in Quorn which is situated 1 mile from Mountsorrell and 9 miles from Thringstone from where the Charnley stones were mined

There is a further web site http://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/david-stanley-auctions

which you may find interesting The auctions are held in 2 formats

collectors tools and general woodworking tools

the location of this auction is Coalville only 1 mile from Thringstone
the next auction is in January and you can view the catalogue on line

regards Brian

David Weaver

12-19-2013, 8:22 AM

Thanks, Brian. wish the UK post international shipping wasn't so high!

Brian Deakin

12-27-2013, 5:20 PM

You may find the following links interesting

http://bosq.home.xs4all.nl/info%2020m/grinding_and_honing_part_3.pdf

http://www.coticule.be/member-registration.html

http://www.coticule.be/member-registration.html

regards Brian

David Weaver

12-27-2013, 5:26 PM

Super cool good stuff on coticules. It's a shame that there aren't more mines still open, but I understand why that's the case.

(those links have changed since I posted that).

Brian Deakin

12-27-2013, 5:43 PM

Please see
http://bosq.home.xs4all.nl/

There appears to be 4 documents

http://bosq.home.xs4all.nl/info%2020m/info_20m-60.pdf

http://bosq.home.xs4all.nl/info%2020m/grinding_and_honing_part_3.pdf

http://bosq.home.xs4all.nl/info%2020m/grinding_and_honing_part_4_belgian_whetstones.pdf

Currently I am unable to to copy the grinding and honing link part 2

regards Brian

David Weaver

12-27-2013, 6:01 PM

Thanks! It's dangerous for me to look at those, it makes me want to get examples of some of the more odd stones.

Brian Deakin

12-27-2013, 6:11 PM

I in the village of Quorn 2 miles from the Whittle Hill Quarry
Further I have seen large hand made wooden boxes containing sharpening stones at local car boot sales and ignored them

and the car boot sales do not resume until March

Brian Deakin

12-27-2013, 6:29 PM

English link

http://bosq.home.xs4all.nl/info%2020m/grinding_and_honing_part_1.pdf

and missing link
http://bosq.home.xs4all.nl/info%2020m/grinding_and_honing_part_2.pdf

regards Brian

David Weaver

01-19-2014, 2:11 PM

Found another oddball....Norton India/Washita combination stone. I know norton made some other stones that may be something like india soft ark or soft and hard arkansas stones in combination.

I haven't seen one of these before, and found it somewhere other than ebay for a song (there really aren't any deals to be had on anything on ebay that has the words pike or norton and washita or arkansas.

I would assume the india is medium india, maybe something a little coarser and softer (which is strange on an older stone - old norton indias are usually frozen solid).

The washita is like no 1 washita, might even be a bit more mottled (as opposed to the open pored and even lilywhites).

Jonas Andersson

01-19-2014, 4:04 PM

A bunch I have collected during the years. The left half of the loot is kinda goofy. I have found them in Sweden.If there is a particulary stone you wanna look close at I can do that.
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/827/yg64.jpg (https://imageshack.com/i/mzyg64j)

jeremy j smith

01-20-2014, 1:31 AM

Brian.

Thank you very much for the interesting reading material.

Jeremy.

Malcolm Schweizer

01-20-2014, 5:42 AM

A bunch I have collected during the years. The left half of the loot is kinda goofy. I have found them in Sweden.If there is a particulary stone you wanna look close at I can do that.

What is the big fat one above the round wheel and left of the red box of slipstones? Also where did you get those slipstones?

David Weaver

01-20-2014, 7:12 AM

I'm curious about the big one, too. I recognize most of the other ones.

Jonas Andersson

01-20-2014, 12:30 PM

Here are two pictures of the big stone in the middle. The slipstones are very bad, bought cheap from the swedish warehouse Biltema...
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/194/i98m.jpg (https://imageshack.com/i/5ei98mj)
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/835/fqer.jpg (https://imageshack.com/i/n7fqerj)

Jonathan McCullough

01-20-2014, 2:52 PM

Okay, here's a goofy stone I picked up yesterday. This was the pick of the litter at the bottom of a wooden box with some picked-over, very old, too-far-gone tools. Judging by its companions the assemblage came from roughly 1850-1900. The chips in the stone seemed to indicate a natural hone so I picked it up for a buck. It measures 6 x 1.5 x approximately 3/4 inch and smelled of old oil and battered wooden box bottom you get from flea markets; too dirty to make any sort of identification. When I cleaned it up a bit it had an odd greenish tinge with a sort of rusty-coppery mottling which I took to be residual rust, but on cleaning up one of the surfaces with a DMT, it seems intrinsic to the stone rather than some sort of staining. The diamond plate easily made a fine chalk-like slurry, so it seems fine but soft. So I'm thinking it's actually a Charnley Forest hone until someone tells me otherwise.

280290

David Weaver

01-20-2014, 2:58 PM

I think it's probably a slate. Charnleys are novaculite, and like a less hard arkansas but not so much soft. It looks like a nice stone.

(edit: after a second look, not so sure, it might be a charnley. A lap of the top to clean it off and make it uniform might reveal what it is - I just haven't seen a charnley that dark, more like olive with the dark greens being slate or maybe idwall novaculites - still those being more tending toward a lighter green).

One of the grab-bag sort of joys of old stones is what they smell like. Someone had been using my washita combo with gun oil in copious quantities - it reeked, just like the outers gun oil smell i remember from my youth.

Jonathan McCullough

01-20-2014, 3:48 PM

Hmm. I can see how the photo would make it seem like a slate, but it has the fingerfeel of the little gray Thuringian I have, and it doesn't have the striations or oleaginous texture of slate. It's hard to capture the green-ness without it being in hand. But if it is a slate, where would it come from?

David Weaver

01-20-2014, 3:56 PM

Anywhere in the UK or continental europe, or possibly the united states.

I haven't used a slate hone from the united states that's thuringian or charnley fine, though. They may exist, but I've never gotten one in my hands.

Any stone that looks like that is a total guess, though (for me). Charnley slurry would be like a light olive color (very light) and chalky is accurate, though the quantity raised isn't quite chalky, more milky.

Mel Fulks

01-20-2014, 4:01 PM

Most of the slates claim Wales or Scotland . Don't know how England missed out.

James Taglienti

01-20-2014, 11:00 PM

Adam Petersen

01-22-2014, 5:49 PM

David Weaver

01-24-2014, 2:36 PM

Heres what I have got on the shelves inside.

Edit---> picture got rotated somehow, I dont know how to fix it.
Group photo left to right top row: an aluminum cased carborundum. the only artificial here; next is a strange natural that looks and feels like a canadian oilstone; a larger green stone that may be a charnley; another canadian; a small tam o shanter; the fastest little natural ive ever had- it cuts like a brand new medium india but its very soft; and two unknown razor hones.

middle is a bunch of hard and soft arkansas slip stones

bottom row- 3 lily whites, a no. 1 washita, and a strange mottled washita; 5 hard arks of different colors; a pile of coticules; and bottom right is a bunch of different slates, some thuringian, some other.
I have used every single one of these stones. Theyre very cool. That being said, I never reach for them. A single Norton 4/8k combo leaves them all in the dust. Big time!

The 2 close ups i need help with- can anyone identify what kind of stone they are?? Specifically the razor hone and the long green one behind it.

280324280325280323

The blue hone with the slurry stone is almost certainly a thuringian origin hone. There were gobs of private labels (I'm sure you've seen some of them) and the dark blue and dark grey stones often went to english company or private labels other than droescher. Seems like escher and droescher branded hones got the nice yellow/green, lighter blue, light green etc. hones. I don't know if the difference is or isn't more than cosmetic, i've never used a dark thuri, but I'm sure a skilled sharpener could easily use it to hone a razor as long as it stops releasing particles under razor pressure. I seriously doubt that they would've sold a thuri-type hone back then that wasn't fine, I've never seen any mention of substandard thuri stuff until the MST type thuris came along as modern hones that weren't intended for razors in the first place.

I would be looking around google for a link of the larkin company to thuringian stones, because it would probably zip the value of the thing up to $200-$300 in one shot.

Honing a razor with it would probably confirm that very quickly, but anything made before the 1930s or so probably was intended for professional use and probably came from the thuringian mines.

The other stone might be something charnley, or it might not. Most charnley's that I've seen have a color like that but with some reddish smudges or streaks going through them, but there are charnley hones that are plainer green with no color, and they are 100% acceptable as razor hones. I had one. It was green like that with little specks all over it and no red on it anywhere.

If it slurries harder than slate but less hard than an arkansas stone and it isn't obviously something else (which I don't know what else it would be), I'd suspect something of the charnley types. It definitely looks like novaculite of some sort and not sedimentary.

But that's just a guess from me - I never really dove too far into all of the english novaculite hones because they're expensive and I just didn't get the urge to buy a bunch of them as they are not as easy to use as an escher.

David Weaver

01-24-2014, 2:46 PM

280569I mostly use waterstones but I picked up these two stones at a antique store today. They felt pretty nice to the touch so I figured I'd give them a try on my O1 steel and see if they are worth a hoot. The jury is still out. The coolest one is the Franz Swaty which is very smooth and appears to have never seen work. It has postage on the box. There's a partial sticker on the side that says Pike but the rest is gone. I figured for $7 I'd grab it and see. The other two seem like finer stones but I'm not really sure. Anyways, that's what I have to show.

A swaty and two vintage soft arkansas. If you're lucky, they're of the washita type, but it's hard to get paid for a washita unless it has a pike sticker on it.

The way you can tell if they're a washita is if you use them for a while and they make an edge that easily shaves hair after a strop. Garden variety non-pike stones never seem to do that for me. I am almost certain the stone one the left is of that type (true washita) based on the surface of it, and the stone on the right may be, too (looks a lot like the mechanics friend variety of washitas).

Three line swaty is the good one to have. Any good razor hone will be perfectly clean like that. Nicks in the side of one are toxic because they will ding up the edge of a razor. One that's lapped is usually lost, too, because they were not the same under the surface as they were on the surface. That one still has one good complete edge left and the surface looks unlapped (resist the urge to ever lap it).

James Taglienti

01-24-2014, 3:04 PM

Three line swaty is the good one to have. Any good razor hone will be perfectly clean like that. Nicks in the side of one are toxic because they will ding up the edge of a razor. One that's lapped is usually lost, too, because they were not the same under the surface as they were on the surface. That one still has one good complete edge left and the surface looks unlapped (resist the urge to ever lap it).

David, remember that razor hone i lapped (and ruined) and then tried to fix with super cut shellac? Its still going strong! I even had it in my truck for a while to touch up chisels at work. Ill never know how fine it used to be, but right now its around my norton 8k. And durable. I thought for sure it would be dead by now. I'd guess that for gentle use with razors it would last until the shellac breaks down, maybe decades

Mel Fulks

01-24-2014, 3:15 PM

Interesting that the one that has more pattern (inconsistent makeup?) is the best.

David Weaver

01-24-2014, 4:23 PM

Interesting that the one that has more pattern (inconsistent makeup?) is the best.

That's been my experience. When a stone has mottling like the one on the left, and the lighter colored parts of it look almost a little waxy, the stones are nicer performers than the gritty looking stones that are perfectly uniform. I have an old soft that has the same color as the washita on the left, but it's got little particles that don't cut any faster than a washita, but once the particles dull from use, they don't cut fine enough to be very usable for much.

A settled in washita and a good bare leather strop will do easy, clean quiet hair shaving, though they are all a little different in their fineness and speed.

If I saw that stone on the left anywhere for less than 30 bucks, I would have it.

David Weaver

01-24-2014, 4:28 PM

David, remember that razor hone i lapped (and ruined) and then tried to fix with super cut shellac? Its still going strong! I even had it in my truck for a while to touch up chisels at work. Ill never know how fine it used to be, but right now its around my norton 8k. And durable. I thought for sure it would be dead by now. I'd guess that for gentle use with razors it would last until the shellac breaks down, maybe decades

I remember you talked about that, that's a smart solution. If you lap off the surface effect that keeps the particles smooth, worn, and together, suspending them in shellac is a really really smart solution. How does it feel when you use it? Is it smooth?

If the shellac breaks down, you can just redo it.

I had to get detached from the razor forums a little bit to get sense about honing razors, and using strops, and once I got to a linen (instead of aggressive compounds that are commonly used on the forums), I realized that I could literally make any decent razor hone out there last several lifetimes. I hope the linens last well. I can make a strop as good as I can buy with a clean run of horse butt, but the linen is something I haven't seen duplicated with current materials.

There was a nice lot of vintage linens yesterday on u-pay, but I have two good linens right now and kind of chickened out on it. The auction number was (posted because it's already over):

251427082592

James Taglienti

01-24-2014, 4:36 PM

How does it feel when you use it? Is it smooth?

Slick and shiny with a nice faint scratching sound to go with it. It works great.

James Taglienti

01-24-2014, 4:43 PM

I've put all my naturals away in favor of a high speed grinder and a norton 4/8. Its fast,and usually i dont even use water- i just wash it off when it gets too black.

Part of it was because I moved, and all i had for the longest time was the 4/8.

Some of it is because my work has shifted almost entirely to painted trim and furniture. I just dont need to fine tune as much. I dont need flawless surfaces or consistent texture. Strange- I had only made one painted piece in 10 years- in 2013 I made 22!

Adam Petersen

01-24-2014, 6:05 PM

Thanks for the information guys. I am really happy with that left one for what I paid. The left and the Swaty were $13 bucks. I am excited to try to use the left one. I will take your advice and leave the Swaty alone for now. And no lapping! That's great to know. I don't straight razor shave so I may just leave it alone all together. The box and sticker are too neat to foul up for no reason.

Noah Wagener

01-25-2014, 4:47 PM

not to tempt an addict, but some place that makes straight razors in Massachusetts that has some new natural water stone mined in the states i believe. http://theperfectedge.com/?product_cat=tpewaterstones

could you explain a little more what you mean by a "smooth" edge for shaving. As a novice i would think the finest particle stone would leave the smoothest edge but you said that the synthetics will not give one a good shave and also that the naturals are coarser. On another post you said that you wouldn't sharpen certain Japanese chisels with your high grit synthetics. Is this some cultural thing that is thought to be in bad taste or for performance reasons?

It appears in those microscope pics that the blades were held at a severe skew, almost side to side strokes?

I picked up a chipped Guanxi stone for cheap but i can not really get it to work. can you give any more tips on using that stone?

the dude abides

David Weaver

01-25-2014, 5:14 PM

I'll answer, even though it's shabbos :)

Those stones look like hindostan hones (from indiana). You can get a shave off of a hindostan as long as the last one you use will hold it's grit. If they're something else, I'm not sure what they are. I do have a hindostan already, though. I got it thinking I might luck out from the ebay picture and get an all-yellow coticule (the seller didn't know what it was), but it's a hindostan. A lot of the razor guys like that fellow (Howard something or other) running that site, so I won't say much other than if they are hindostans, that's pretty high, but at the same time, he may have to do some work or make some arrangements to get the finer stones of the type because most are not so fine.

* I don't use fine synthetics on nice japanese chisels because they leave sort of a tasteless looking edge. A nice natural finisher leaves a prettier edge, and since the japanese chisels don't hold onto much of a wire edge, you can't tell a sharpness difference between synthetic and a decent natural finisher

* The shallower the groove is, at least relative to its width, the more I usually like the shave, as long as the edge is keen enough in the end. Coticules are a stone that gives a very good shave despite having huge particles. They might be 10 times the size of the particles in a synthetic finisher. They are very round, though, and a good uniform coticule will allow you to final hone a stone without releasing garnet particles. They are a total crapshoot, so I wouldn't advise getting into them (most of them just don't lead to that keen of an edge, and the truly good ones are usually really expensive and of vintage flavor), just using them as an example. Some synthetics will do funny things with razors. There are pictures of edges chipping right off of a shapton 16k glasstone, despite sharpening fine on anything else.

Some of that preference is also related to my skin not tolerating the 0.1 micron powder kind of shave. If an edge is brought from any stone and then finished on those super fine compounds, it doesn't make any difference where it came from. I prefer a natural stone brought up with a vintage linen. It'll be very sharp, but not punishing. Everyone likes different things, though, and most of the guys who hone for pay (which boggles my mind) like something quick and work through synthetics and may possibly do a few strokes on a natural stone and then finish with a modern compound. I'd bet they hone a razor in 3 minutes for $20. There is a demand for it, I guess.

* naturals are not necessarily coarser. They have larger particles. If a natural stone will just refuse to hold its particles in place (and make a slurry like a soft synthetic stone does), then the 1 micron type synethetics will be sharper. If one of the stones out there with the smallest natural particles (the slates or the japanese stones with 3 micron particles, etc) will hold those particles in place and you use light pressure, you can get a very keen edge without deep grooves in it (deep being a relative term for synthetics with 1 micron stones) and it will be comfortable for someone with sensitive skin, but still sharp.

* that leads into your guangxi hone - if your stone is hard enough to hold its particles in place, it should be able to do a good job. Otherwise, I think they are probably like a low level finisher like a 4000 grit stone, and if they are soft, you'll never really get a great edge off of them. If you have one that's hard, you can really work up a good edge with it, but it takes some patience to learn the stone. I don't know how practical that is for woodworking. I'd consider them a great razor stone, especially given their price, but if you get one that's soft and won't hold its grit, it'll never make a good razor finisher, and for tools, it'll leave you wishing you were just using synthetics.

If you get a hard one, then you need either a stone to slurry on it or to raise a slurry at first with a diamond hone and then finish with it without a slurry.

Noah Wagener

01-26-2014, 6:03 PM

thanks David,

Ive read a few books that were just on sharpening and they do not even scratch the surface of info you provide here. I really should "build you a cake or something" in appreciation.

I wonder how that stone came to be called Hindostan. I think it means land of the Hindos as Hindustan in northern India is the land of the Hindus. Now i'm curious about how Indiana got it's name as well. How silly of me to think there was a stone you hadn't tried. I'll keep trying to stump the guru.

I think the Guangzi stone i got is a hard one. It does not slurry with just the tool like synthetics. It also does not hold any water. I also get a burr which i do not with synthetics except on lower grits. Are these indications of hardness?

I think i'm going to have to breakdown and get a nice synthetic finisher anyways. Is there a difference in the Japanese version of the Shapton pro? There are few on ebay that are stateside and cheaper than the one they sell here. But a guy in Japan selling them says they (the Japanese versions) are magnesia stones which sound a little to fussy for me.

fyi, in another Cohen brothers movie (Miller's Crossing) the Italian mob boss says you get a first class shave if use cold water on your razor to contract the metal.

David Weaver

01-26-2014, 9:06 PM

There's definitely a lot of stones I haven't tried, most notably a tam o shanter and a norton 8000. I haven't tried either of those, for different reasons. I'd have a tam o shanter if I ever ran across one that said it was for razors and didn't cost a ton (they were the it stone for a little, but the escher and droescher thuringians quickly became the it stones). Like the cake reference, though!

I don't know much about the hindostans or hindustans (can't remember what the spelling of the town in indiana is), just that they are considered a second rate stone compared to the novaculite stones, like the queer creek stones, and I've never really chased after stones for historical reasons (and thus don't have one of everything) except for washitas. I think the whole reason that I got a bunch of washitas was based on their ability to eliminate almost every other stone that was commonly used before them in the US and parts of europe. I think they're my favorite.

I haven't read any books other than leonard lee's book and the short excerpt on sharpening stones from the holtzapffel book

Did just fine a nifty reference in trying to find the right spelling of hindostan, too:

http://books.google.com/books?id=XVI6AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA234&lpg=PA234&dq=queer+creek+and+hindostan+stones&source=bl&ots=YCRlSgapFf&sig=1XEAOh_EZh9cP6VZuk5SeDQeGwY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=pLrlUtPtMuLjsAT0moKICg&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=queer%20creek%20and%20hindostan%20stones&f=false

If the guangxi stone is raising a substantial wire edge without a slurry, it must be coarser than most of them are. They are usually slow on clear water (with no slurry) and don't raise much of anything.

As far as the shaptons go, they say they do something with the stones to make the US market stones more appropriate for the weather here, and that the japanese stones might craze. I have one japanese stone and it hasn't crazed but other people say they have had crazing on their stones. To me, that's not something I care about because I know for sure I'm going to glue the stone to a base, anyway.

If the japan market stones are magnesia instead of resin, that's news to me. Those are just terms to me, anyway, though. You can get the gray market shapton cream, etc, from stu and from a seller on ebay called "JP metal master" (who is Takeshi Kuroda, I've ordered at least half a dozen things from him in the past, he's a reputable seller and the fact that he tracked down nimura and get me a full stamp nimura dai at a custom angle at my request means that he's not just selling odd lots of stuff).

The cold water quote is an interesting one. There was a craze about 2 years ago to shave cold water, it didn't exactly fully catch on. I figure my razor at room temperature doesn't know much difference vs. what it would if my face was cold, and my face definitely doesn't like the cold water that I'd need to have to keep the edge of the razor cold. I tried a whole bunch of stuff when I started shaving, but have gone low maintenance and just maintain my razor with a vintage linen for the most part. I could literally use a chinese hone to keep it in shape once every 6 months for 5 minutes. Without the vintage linen, though, I'd have to hone every three weeks.

I kind of like to try the stuff that's been marketed away (as in, straight razor shaving, etc) as being difficult to master, etc, because most of it turns out to be baloney. There is a little more learning curve, but you usually find out that people 100 years ago weren't just a glutton for punishment doing everything they could the hard way just because they were into self torture. Straight razor shaving reveals itself to be pretty practical and quick (but not very good revenue for razor makers), as long as you know what you need to have. A great shave for me is 6 minutes. A very quick 2 pass is 4 including the stropping. Even the "very quick" is better than any shave I ever had with the super multi blade razors out there.

After ditching all of the modern wonder metals, I'm starting to feel the same way about the washita and a clean leather strop. It's interesting how sharp you can get a tool if you have to do it with just one stone, and how well the vintage stuff works when you pair it with a washita stone. Maybe not beginners material, and nobody really wants to rob themselves of the experience of trying a whole bunch of different things I guess, but I could teach a beginner how to use the stone (it would need to be in person) at least as fast as they could learn any other method. It's just a little narrower range for technique forgiveness. It's too bad norton won't humor us any longer by mining what are otherwise still plentiful natural stones.

Noah Wagener

01-30-2014, 3:49 PM

David Weaver

01-31-2014, 10:05 AM

Lots of info here to digest. So a fine stone will not put a burr on the side of the edge opposite the one you are working? I thought i wasnt getting burrs on fine synthetics because of the softness and mud. I thought maybe a harder stone would fold steel over like a burnisher? Now that i've used that Guangxi stone a little I do not get a burr. It does sound coarse but it is real slow and i do not really see any of that black swarf. Did the one you had work best with a soak? I do not think i have enough experience, sensitivity, or money to experiment with naturals. But your threads are a great resource if i ever want to.

Are you also saying that a slurry is used to speed up a fine stone and then finish with the stone clean?

In the classifieds you said you were getting rid of your man mades. Do you have anymore for sale and did you sell the Snow White?

Thanks again

I never soaked any of the chinese slates I've had (I've had 3, they're all a little different). One of them gives the same kind of impression that you're describing, it makes a whole lot of noise, as if it's made of porcelain, but it doesn't damage an edge or cut fast. If you tapped on it with something hard, it would sound a little like tapping on a ceramic coffee mug. Both of the others (one from woodcraft and one directly from china on ebay) don't make as much noise.

As you've described the slurry is pretty much the way it goes. Raise a slurry to speed up the cut on a fine stone and if you want a finer edge than the slurry provides, clear it off and finish honing with just clear water on the surface instead of a slurry. Sounds like a pain, but it's probably a minute long process, and if you want to save the slurry, you can just spray clear water on one end of the stone and leave the slurry on another and finish the honing on the clear spot.

That obviously only works on a stone that doesn't self slurry. Stones that self slurry will never quite be able to match the edge that a similar but harder stone will make. The difference is much more stark in natural stones since the particles in the finer synthetics are so small and sharp (e.g., the SP 13k will raise a slurry while it's working, but its particles are a fourth or fifth of the diameter of the finest natural stone particles, so it will still create a very nice edge).

As far as burnishing an edge or bending it over, it depends somewhat on the steel. Something very hard like a good quality japanese chisel will just refuse to do anything other than be honed. Off of a fine stone, there just never will be much there that bends back and forth or feels like a wire edge (you can, of course, raise a wire edge with a coarser stone). On the other hand, if you have a vintage chisel, especially if it's vintage but new enough to be alloyed, the edge can probably be influenced more. You'll always get the best final edge if you finish on the stone with light strokes, despite the sensation that the stone isn't doing anything with those light strokes.

You can even take an edge that is very sharp for woodworking and find out which way the iron shaves hair better -bevel up or bevel down. then wipe the opposite side with a few firm strokes across your palm and all of the sudden it will cut hair more easily on the opposite side. On a truly fine fine edge, like a straight razor edge, you go to the length of coming up with a process that gets past this and leaves an edge so correct and perfect that it will not show favor to one side over the other. Quick is more important for woodworking. Out of habit, I always make the last strop stroke on the side that will be cutting. Belt and suspenders I guess, but except for the few times I've done something out of curiosity, I have never spent time getting a woodworking edge to be as fine as a razor edge, but every edge on every plane will still shave hair pretty easily. There's a big divide between shaving hair and shaving hair the way a straight razor shaves comfortably - I think it's easy enough to get that shaving hair sharpness of a plane that I do it even on the coarsest planes, and it takes long enough to get the toothless feeling smooth straight razor type of sharpness that there's nothing that warrants it in woodworking. It would be blasted back to the quick edge in a couple of strokes.

i do have some more stones to dump - pretty much everything synthetic that wasn't a gift or part of a friendly trade, though I've probably dumped a dozen stones or more in the last year already so my grotesque pile isn't what it once was.

David Weaver

03-16-2014, 10:27 PM

Someone asked on another thread what my favorite finisher was, and I think this pretty much covers it. Bone colored hard arkansas.

I had one, but found another one on ebay last week. I have no idea what makes them bone colored, but it's not something on the surface, as you can lap all you want and the stones are still yellow.

So far in a grand sum of two stones, they are strong cutters but fine and will bring out a nice polish.

I've never found these stones in the wild, and thus have never had the chance to get one cheap, but I guess at $100 each for this one and the other one (that griggs so nicely made me a case for), they are cheaper than new translucent stones, and the new stones are missing the combination of fast and fine that this one has and the bone colored stone that I probably posted earlier also has.

I had to guess a little bit whether this was actually a translucent stone, you can see the before picture. The seller was fairly proud of it, too, so there's a risk it ends up being a mediocre stone that's not that fine that just has oil that's oxidized a little brown. Fortunately, that's not the case here.

284917284916

Someone made a nice case for it, too, with the hinge on the end. It is the first stone I have seen that was actually crowned significantly, but the surface was fine with no abuse. I'd guess that it was being used for someone's razor, but probably not recently. It had an outers gun oil kind of smell that you know if you've smelled it. This was its first and last unjust abuse with a diamond hone. It's fairly fine already, but should settle into something really nice.

Tony Zaffuto

03-17-2014, 5:30 AM

What diamond grit did you use?

David Weaver

03-17-2014, 7:13 AM

I used a worn out DMT extra coarse. If I use it on razors, I'll probably rub a washita against it to condition the surface.

Tony Zaffuto

03-19-2014, 10:52 AM

I've been working a bit on the new old stone I picked up last weekend at PATINA. I was wondering what it was because of the uniform darkness plus it felt pretty fine (I have a magic, deciphering fingernail to determine fineness!). Anyhow the stone cuts nicely as is, but I can't leave well enough alone. George suggested it might be a soft Arkansas, and I concurred that to be a good possibility.

Early this morning, after scrubbing the top with WD40 & a rag, I decided to take a coarse DMT stone to the surface. Didn't work it very much, but the stone is not dark, but showing white. I may work it a bit more to determine if there is any translucence to the stone, but only after taking some O1 to the surface to test feel. Stone is definitely going to be a user (at least for a while).

David Weaver

03-19-2014, 11:17 AM

The mystery is solved. Could very well be a washita stone. I think I probably said it in this thread already, but a couple of my washitas were left intentionally to have a caked on surface so that they could be used with razors. They were black, and the only reason I could tell what they were on ebay is because a corner was chipped.

They have the orangish color now that the layer has been taken off of them, and both are fairly fine for a washita to start (but not fine like a translucent ark), and the bottoms are bone/white color because the oil has never gotten down that far.

Tony Zaffuto

03-19-2014, 12:20 PM

The white is on the top David! As the bottom was left rough and unfinished, I may try something very aggressive in that area to see the coloration.

David Weaver

03-19-2014, 12:36 PM

The white is on the top David! As the bottom was left rough and unfinished, I may try something very aggressive in that area to see the coloration.

Yep, right, on top. I only made that comment because I didn't remove enough material to get to white on the tops of my washitas, but I still wanted to see what their color was, which was easy enough to find on the bottom where they'd never seen the light of day. It's interesting that your whole stone was black enough from not being cleaned that it was black all over, including the back. I wonder if someone did that on purpose.

Tony Zaffuto

03-19-2014, 12:48 PM

Yep, right, on top. I only made that comment because I didn't remove enough material to get to white on the tops of my washitas, but I still wanted to see what their color was, which was easy enough to find on the bottom where they'd never seen the light of day. It's interesting that your whole stone was black enough from not being cleaned that it was black all over, including the back. I wonder if someone did that on purpose.

Think it was from whatever lubricant used as not only the stone was black (part sitting in the box was particularly grimy) but the box was also, though there doesn't seem to be any discernible smell to it. I also thinking Washita.

How long ago did "soft Arkansas" stones come into the picture? Were they a replacement for Washita's the way the medium India was touted?

David Weaver

03-19-2014, 12:56 PM

They were sold at the same time as a budget stone alternative to the washitas. They were something like 1/2 to 2/3rds of the cost of a washita, and to someone who had a hard arkansas, it probably made no difference.

Mel Fulks

03-19-2014, 1:12 PM

David , the white stones can be a lower grade ,or a HIGHER grade (lily white) ? I'm confused.

David Weaver

03-19-2014, 1:26 PM

White softs that didn't come from the pike mine or whatever the valley that pike has their mine in can cut fast like a washita, but they don't make an edge as nice. A hard arkansas that doesn't come from pike, but that meets the definition of hard by density, especially if it's 2.6 specific gravity or so, will be finer.

lots of the old softs are white, but they are different than a lilywhite - more sandy and less smooth feeling. They are also often (like the washitas) stained orangish, which is either from oxidized oil or oxidized metal. I like to take stones out of their cases if they can be removed and look at the bottoms because it gives me an idea of exactly what the stone looked like when it was new...as long as it was put in a box tight enough that the bottom didn't get slopped (they often are).

The high grade washitas are all very consistent (little or no mottling) and very white. I don't think they had much appreciation for stones that had any variation back when it was easy to get the material.

I saw a second line washita-ish looking stone with color veins sell for $125 on ebay yesterday. I fancied it because it had just a bit of translucence at the edge, and thought I would probably be able to get it for $60 because the front wasn't that consistent and the back didn't look remotely similar. Pike would probably have thrown it out 125 years ago.

Mel Fulks

03-19-2014, 1:29 PM

Thanks. I guess that explains the desire for labeled stones when buying on ebay.

David Weaver

03-19-2014, 1:31 PM

Yeah, if it's got a label, you know exactly what it is. Pike liked a narrow range of stones for their top labels. And when you know exactly what it is, that means that if you decide you want to sell it, you won't have to convince anyone of anything.

Kees Heiden

03-19-2014, 2:13 PM

285108
285109

Well, I got into the oil stone craze too. Today this one arrived 4 x 4 x 20 cm, so it is very thick. According to the seller ( a reputable one I might say) it is a Washita. Anyone care to relief me of my believe in the seller? I allready tried it a bit to sharpen a brad awl. One thing which is completely different from my India stone is that it doesn't soak up the oil like crazy. It stays much more on the surface

I has distinct depressions on two sides as if someone sharpened gouges in one particular sweeping patern. My idea is to use the oilstones for things like gouges, narrow chisels and stuff like that which aren't very symphatic for my waterstones.

Tony Zaffuto

03-19-2014, 2:15 PM

David Weaver

03-19-2014, 2:17 PM

It looks like one to me - I would be shocked if it isn't given the way it looks like a structure with pores rather than like a bar of sandy grit. A little bit of use with it will confirm it, though. To be cut in those proportions, it must be a fairly old stone.

The pore structure is a lot different in these than it is in the vitrified (india, etc) stones - whatever you put on it will stay on the surface, and proof of how little passes through the stone can be seen by the bottoms of some of my washita stones that are literally 100 years old and still have a bright white back that's never seen oil (i.e., it never actually goes through the stone, it just accumulates on and close to the surface).

gouges are maybe the one thing where you won't quite be satisfied with the edge.

Kees Heiden

03-19-2014, 2:20 PM

Allright, so that's 40 euro well spend, with two favorite votes so far. :)

For the gouges I also have a translucent Norton stone. I'll just have to get of my butt and start practicing.

David Weaver

03-19-2014, 2:23 PM

Allright, so that's 40 euro well spend, with two favorite votes so far. :)

For the gouges I also have a translucent Norton stone. I'll just have to get of my butt and start practicing.

You're good to go. I'd have spent the equivalent of 60 bucks on that stone without reservation. It's extremely uncommon to find stones that are that old that are bad ones.

Tony Zaffuto

03-19-2014, 2:31 PM

You're good to go. I'd have spent the equivalent of 60 bucks on that stone without reservation. It's extremely uncommon to find stones that are that old that are bad ones.

That makes me feel real good, as I have never spent more than $15.00 on one of these! One of these days I'll have to inventory the stones, both identified and unknowns!

David Weaver

03-19-2014, 2:53 PM

That makes me feel real good, as I have never spent more than $15.00 on one of these! One of these days I'll have to inventory the stones, both identified and unknowns!

You got into this at the right time. I have one stone that cost me $13 and another one that cost me $17 (a mechanic's friend and a woodworker's delight), and I guess a norton combination that effectively was about $15 where one side is washita, but other than that I've spent closer to $40 each, and it looks like those days are long gone!

Still be something that should be find-able locally every once in a while, among the throngs of india and carborundum stones.

Tony Zaffuto

03-19-2014, 3:54 PM

You got into this at the right time. I have one stone that cost me $13 and another one that cost me $17 (a mechanic's friend and a woodworker's delight), and I guess a norton combination that effectively was about $15 where one side is washita, but other than that I've spent closer to $40 each, and it looks like those days are long gone!

Still be something that should be find-able locally every once in a while, among the throngs of india and carborundum stones.

Some of the best shopping is still at tool gatherings, such as Patina or the upcoming Brown sale. Last week I passed up a 1-1/4" wide by about 7" or 8" long washita (in carved box) and at least 2 or 3 other stones that I suspected of being a natural stone (fingernail and visual tests!).

Tony Zaffuto

03-19-2014, 7:15 PM

More scrubbing on my new old stone. Seems to have a very consistent off white coloration and is a bit opaque!

David Weaver

10-26-2014, 3:10 PM

One more set of oddballs. One of these is a finisher I've had, the others are stones I picked up.

All are natural stones from japan.

299038

Left to right:

Amakusa
Binsui
Iyoto Nagura
Okudo Suita

The only expensive stone in the bunch is the okudo suita, but it is a fantastic stone. Fast but very slick and smooth feeling and leaves an excellent edge for its speed. It just does self slurry, and the slurry on the top is from sharpening probably 3 dozen tools. It can be slowed down a little by rinsing off the slurry, and it doesn't go out of flat fast.

The amakusa and binsui are medium grit stones (like 800-1500 equivalent) and to be honest, they are both about the same (the amakusa is orange under the dried slurry, though, and prettier). The binsui is better for normal use.

The iyoto is a stone that fujibato mines, and I'm not that impressed with it for what it is, it seems to be lost. it's not too fast, but not too coarse, but not too fine, and it won't leave a finished edge. it's like a finer binsui. I guess that's really what a mid grit stone is, though, something that is between everything else, and is kind of unimpressive because of it.

I've used these a little bit in the last couple of weeks with vintage and carbon steel (western and japanese) and they work very well with that, cutting surprisingly fast (faster than oilstones). I'd heard not so great things about the coarse japanese natural stones, but the binsui and amakusa are cheap (about $75 for both at CKTG), and there is plenty of stone in each (they are over five pounds each). They're fairly hard for a coarse stone, but self slurrying so they stay fast.

You can tell which two I've been using, the binsui and okudo suita (they're wet), but I'd use all 4 if I were honing a japanese iron. On a hollow grind, no need. And because of the way these stones cut, no real need for stropping, either - there's no particularly organized wire edge coming off of the okudo suita.