Paging Dr. Weaver ...

[Mel Fulks]

I saw a reference the other day about lily white stones being labeled on end as fine or coarse, but I never see any other mention.

[David Weaver]

I may have been the one who said that. they have to still have the end label to show it, though.

Ebay completed item - look at the picture.

301076548623

I don't know how many of them were labeled on the end like this. Any evidence that mine had a label on the end is long gone now, and the newer stones appear to have a label on the side only (like many of norton's later offerings). I have an india/washita combination that has a label on the side but nothing on the end.

I usually figure any stone that's got a good clean label on the end is going to go way out of my range. I would've paid what that one sold for, though, just to have one (as in i'd pay that once, but not twice or more).

The only trouble with having really nice things like that is you never like to use them that much (or maybe it's just me).

[Mel Fulks]

Thanks. I think I saw it in some 19th century report about types and industry of stones that shows up googling ,but I never see it mentioned in regard to ebay stuff.

[David Weaver]

When pike was marketing their stones separately, I wonder if they were selling the range of stones as a coarse and fine solution, or if they were targeting them to different groups (like the coticules, which have a reputation for being a fine stone, but there are plenty of more coarse coticules unsuitable for razors - they just don't have a big label on them that says "special for the barber trades".

The pike hards look like the vintage norton hards, but they are all out of my price range, and it may have been that pike and norton were together by then. The answer of that is probably easy to find, but I am more of a fanatic of the stones themselves and less so about the history of the companies.

My pikes would not qualify as fine stones (I have only ever seen fine and soft end labels), but when used without conditioning the surface, they become very fine cutting (especially with light pressure) without losing the ability to raise a wire edge.

[Mel Fulks]

The article says blocks of stone were carefully checked and labeled on site and the finished stone would get description label on the end. Is there a range in grit rating of the ones you've seen?

[David Weaver]

Just coarse/soft and fine/hard. There may be more, but end labeled stones don't come up in droves, so it may be that we've only seen two because others haven't sold and become visible online.

Japanese miners pretty much do the same thing, as far as I know - grade the stones at the mine and determine where they're going.

A couple of months ago, I thought it was very high when a nice unused stone went for $260, it had very clean fresh labels, cleaner than the one showing above.

How that labeled stone sells for $140 and a newer behr manning or newer era lilywhite goes for $310 or whatever that 7 inch stone settled on is really just ebay magic.